You too can grow delicious olives and do so in your backyard! The Mission Olive tree, Olea europaea 'Mission,' bears the Mission olive fruit, a favorite for both pickling and pressing olive oil. Native to the Mediterranean, these olive trees were planted by the Missionaries at the San Diego Mission in the late 17th Century. An evergreen, they adapt well to the California climate, which is why they are a common sight in landscapes throughout our area. They are also an attractive landscape specimen tree with gray-green and silver colored foliage that can provide shade as well as visual interest! We like to use them as a focal point in a front yard and highlight the multi-trunk structure with landscape lighting so that your yard gets noticed for all the right reasons!

Mission olive trees thrive in a location with full sun exposure, and they love the heat! Once established, they are drought tolerant trees with little to moderate water requirements. At Moon Valley Nurseries, we grow the Olea europaea Mission olive tree on our massive olive tree farm just north of Temecula wine country in Southern California. In fact, our trees have grown their entire lives in the hot and dry inland climate, and unlike those grown in the Central Valley, we guarantee disease-free olives!

Mission Olive trees have a slow growth rate, so buy one as big as you can if you are looking for a tree that can provide shade! Moon Valley Nurseries is the grower of Olea europaea olives so that we can assure their quality is far superior to those found elsewhere. With free planting available on all box sized trees, it cannot get any easier to have these ancient specimen olive trees in your landscape!