You can do it, but it's a high-maintenance tree if you want to keep it pruned up like that. They want to spread - Swan Hill and Majestic are listed to be 30 feet tall and 30 feet wide, and because they aren't fruiting, they have more energy to grow quickly.

You will be trying to keep them to less than 1/3 their normal size?

Find a tree species where the mature size is not much larger than the space you want it to fill and you will have a healthier tree and less maintenance.

Hiya Tom and all,

As usual, I agree with Lazy: you can prune that olive as hard and as frequently as you want and it will be just fine. It WILL, however, be a lot of frequent work for you or whoever ends up doing it though. There are lots of smaller trees that would fit in that space and not need such intensive maintenance, but if your heart is set on a fruitless olive, it'll work.

Let us know what you decide and how it works out!
Happy gardening,
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: Pics from my garden, March 2014

Thanks for the responses. I really love Olive trees, but I won't want to be constantly fighting to keep what wants to be a 30'x30' tree in that space. Treeland carries what they call a "Santa Cruz Fruitless Olive" that they claim grows to 10 to 20' high and wide. This is the smallest fruitless olive I've found. I'll do some more research on that... But I'll likely pick something else or settle for a true dwarf Olive (Little Ollie, etc).

Tom