Pruning This Tree In November Will Damage Its Flowers - Just Wait Until Spring

Tea olives are woody evergreen perennials best-known for their small white flowers that bloom in late summer and last into the colder months. If you have a tea olive (Osmanthus spp.), whether growing as a shrub or trained into a small tree, you likely already know its best attribute: the fragrance that fills your yard in the fall from those flowers. Missing out on the sweet-smelling blooms because of a simple pruning mistake would be a real shame. You need to protect those new-forming buds at all costs, so putting down your shears in November is vital.

All tea olive species and cultivars set their blooms on old wood (that year's growth). This means the flower buds for this year's fall flowers are already there, hidden within the branches, long before November arrives. If you trim the plant in the fall, even if you just want to give it a quick tidy-up, you risk cutting off every single bud. You might have a tidy shrub, but it won't have any of the strongly scented flowers you're growing it for. That's a big loss, especially if you've started a pollinator garden and were relying on the late-season blooms to bring in the bees and butterflies. Instead, wait until early spring to shape a tea olive.

Pruning a tea olive in the fall does more than get rid of the flower buds. In USDA Hardiness Zones 6 through 8, where these shrubs grow best, it needs to be in good health to survive low temperatures and frost. Pruning signals to the plant that it's time to grow. When you cut back a tea olive late in the year, you create raw, open wounds on the plant just as it's entering a period of dormancy — and in the lead-up to harsh winter weather. The tree wastes energy trying to heal pruning wounds, and any new shoots it produces are easily damaged by cold snaps. Your tea olive will struggle for survival unnecessarily, leading to branch dieback in severe cases. In other words, don't prune this plant in November for your best garden next spring.

The best time to trim a tea olive is early to mid-spring, which lines up with the plant's natural growth cycle. Spring pruning encourages growth right as the tree is coming out of its winter rest period. Your tea olive then has the entire spring and summer to seal the cuts, minimizing the risk of infection or harm from pests. This is helpful if you need to do a hard trim of the plant. Take this opportunity to remove old, leggy growth or shape the plant without the risk of removing buds. You can, however, remove dead or diseased material any time of the year from this pretty, fragrant garden shrub that flowers and blooms in the fall.