Sweet Olive
Osmanthus fragrans
An evergreen shrub grown for clusters of tiny flowers with a powerful apricot-like scent in fall and again in spring; plant it by a path, patio or door. It makes a fine screen, hedge or specimen, grows in sun or shade and tolerates clay. It's frost-sensitive, and in the South it needs afternoon shade.
- Mature size
- 14 × 10 ft
- 4.5 × 3 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 8a–9b
- USDA
- Sun
- Part sun to part shade
- Water
- Medium
- Blooms
- Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov
Sweet Olive at its mature size
A mature Sweet Olive grows 10 to 20 feet tall and 8 to 14 feet wide, taller than most people.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: NC State Extension, The Tree Center.
Through the year
What Sweet Olive looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
In leaf · May–Sep, Dec–Feb
Glossy dark green leaves.
In flower · Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov
Tiny cream flower clusters along the stems.
Photos
Growing Sweet Olive
- Grows well in
- The Southeast, the Plains and Mountain West, and California.
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Good for
- Privacy screen, hedge, specimen, shade garden, deer resistant, and fragrant
- Leaves
- Evergreen
- Native to
- China, Japan, and Himalayas
Spacing for a hedge
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Sweet Olive, that’s about 10 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Sweet Olive in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.