Wheeler’s Cold Hardy Fragrant Tea Olive (Osmanthus) – 3 Gallon Pot

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More cold hardy and dense and compact than the species, the Carl Wheeler Tea Olive, Osmanthus fortunei, sports highly ornamental toothed, deep green leaves and the same wonderfully fragrant flowers as other white flowering tea olives. The flowers are small but one plant will fill a front or back yard with wonderful aroma. The scent is really indescribable. It’s just one of those things you have to experience for yourself. Its density, having more leaves than any other Tea Olive in our gardens, makes Carl Wheeler a fine selection for super-solid hedges and screens or lower branches can be removed to form what will be one of the most attractive evergreen specimen trees in your landscape.

Growing 12 to 15 feet tall and 10 to 12 feet wide with no pruning, Carl Wheeler Tea Olive can be grown as a large shrub or small tree. The shrub can be kept smaller with occasional pruning. As a shrub, its dense foliage makes it ideal for use as a natural or clipped evergreen hedge, privacy screen, or background, or to frame corners or fill voids between widely-spaced windows in home foundation plantings. As it grows taller, lower branches can be removed to form a highly attractive small tree for use as a focal point specimen in sunny to partially shaded landscape borders and home foundation plantings. A fine addition to fragrance gardens, cottage gardens, white theme gardens and the Xeriscape (low water needs).

Suggested Spacing:  6 to 8 feet apart for a solid hedge or privacy screen;  16 feet or more apart for space between plants

Carl Wheeler tea Olive is very easy to grow in most any average, moist but well-drained acidic to neutral soil and full sun to mostly shade. We suggest at least 3 hours of direct sunlight per day or all-day lightly filtered sun for best flowering. Exceptionally drought tolerant when established. Over decades of growing this plant in our own gardens, we’ve seen no insect or disease problems and deer don’t touch it. As with many other plants, a constantly soggy or wet soil can be problematic. No pruning necessary however responds well to to it for shaping purposes or hedges.