Boy this plant took some digging to id. I thought for sure it was Chinese or Japanese privet. But the young leaves are holly like and I couldn’t find mention of holly like young leaves on any description of privet. Older leaves are oval in shape with no trace of the holly like points they started out with.
The previous owners of this house were not gardeners. There were about 40 of these planted around the base of the house. They had grown to over 8′ tall and were blocking windows on two sides of the house. Out they came. I did leave a few but cut them back to the ground. The homeowner’s association sent me a nasty letter about the joys of native plants. These are not native plants.
These are nice thick, dense shrubs that will grow in sun or shade, wet areas or dry. You can cut them back to the ground and they will come back. You can shape them into trees or just about any other shape you’d like.
They are ever green and have small white flowers come spring. The flowers are heavily scented. They can reach 15′-20′ tall.
More information:
Osmanthus heterophyllum Holly Tea Olive
Tea Olive looks great, smells just as good
4 responses so far ↓
1 Garden Obsession // Jul 11, 2007 at 10:58 pm
HOAs make the worst gardeners!
2 herself // Jul 12, 2007 at 3:17 am
Isn’t that the truth!
3 admin // Jan 7, 2008 at 2:44 pm
This also grows in cooler climates than Houston - no winter problems with this plant.
4 ljmacphee // Aug 25, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I ripped the rest of this out this past spring.
Between constant pruning and scale it just wasn’t impressive enough to keep.
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