The Dense Evergreen Shrub That'll Fill Your Yard With Highly Fragrant White Flowers

Designing an outdoor garden isn't just about picking pretty flowers or greenery that will fill in gaps; it's about crafting an experience for whoever is strolling through. Sure, showy florals that dazzle the eye can be a part of this, but there are plenty of other factors that can contribute to the overall feeling, like fragrance. A shrub with lovely-smelling blooms can massively boost the allure of your outdoor space, and when you plant an option like burkwood osmanthus (Osmanthus x burkwoodii) that has year-round visual appeal, the overall appearance of your garden will benefit, too.

Burkwood osmanthus is a hybrid of two trees: the Delavay tea olive (Osmanthus delavayi) and Caucasian osmanthus (Osmanthus decorus). It can be grown as a small tree if desired, but because of its slow growth habit and dense greenery, it's very popular to cultivate it as a shrub. It might not be a quick grower, but it's certainly a resilient one — this plant is very easy to maintain and tolerant of a wide range of conditions, so it shouldn't take much work on your part to keep it happy if you live in USDA Hardiness Zones 6 through 8. While its pretty, tubular white flowers pop up around spring, giving you a boost of fragrance right as the weather starts to warm up, this evergreen shrub will brighten up your yard throughout the entire year with its green, leathery leaves.

This low-maintenance hedge you can plant in your yard is far from fussy. It's resistant to insects, diseases, and pollution, and as an added bonus, deer seem to want nothing to do with it. It can do well in both full sun or partial shade, though an increase in light can help to encourage more blooms, and it's also not picky when it comes to soil. As long as it has solid drainage, just about any soil type is good enough, from clay to sand and acidic to alkaline. If your soil is particularly dense or swampy, this could mean some amendments or repositioning to protect your shrubs against wet feet, but this is really the only care consideration you have to make. It's even drought-tolerant once it's gotten comfortable in your garden, though a bit of water during dry spells can help to keep things healthy.

When it comes to long-term maintenance, you won't have to do much, either — rich soil is preferred, so a bit of fertilizer can help here and there if you're noticing particularly slow growth, but it's not a necessity. Make sure you only prune this shrub just after it's flowered, as it blooms on old wood. With this very simple care, you should be able to enjoy a flurry of flowers during springtime that produce a gourmand scent that's been likened to that of vanilla or ripe apricot. While its flowers don't have a fragrance that's quite as strong as those of the Delavay tea olive, burkwood osmanthus is a more resilient and larger alternative that will provide you with the best of both worlds.