Tea olives are the sweetly fragrant evergreen shrubs of the genus Osmanthus, grown above all for a scent out of all proportion to the tiny flowers that carry it. Dense, glossy, and slow-growing, they bloom over a long season, some in autumn, some in spring, and a few nearly year-round, filling the air with a perfume of apricot and jasmine that reaches far beyond the plant. The handsome evergreen foliage would earn a place even without the flowers; the fragrance is the gift on top.

In the landscape tea olives are hard-working and refined. They make dense evergreen hedges and screens, take clipping well, and hold a polished green presence in every season. Their real magic, though, is in placement: sited by a door, a path, or a window that opens, a tea olive scents a whole living space every time the shrub is in bloom. This is a plant to site by the nose as much as the eye.

We grow tea olives for that incomparable fragrance and for their steady, undemanding evergreen structure. Tough, long-lived, and tolerant of sun or part shade, they give a Southern garden both a reliable backbone and one of its great sensory pleasures. Few shrubs offer so much for so little care.

Give them sun to part shade and well-drained soil, and site them where the scent will find you. Pair them with our Camellias for four-season evergreen interest, and set them among our Large Shrubs for a fragrant screen.