Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The mahonias our mothers grew, Mahonia bealias, were called leatherleaf, and you needed leather gloves to mess with them as because they had such sharp spines on their leaves. But they added drama to dark, dry areas of their gardens. Then came a much softer and graceful variety, Mahonia fortune, which I planted by our north-facing porch steps, and its grown well but gets leggy and every year I have to cut a third of it back to keep it attractive. A newer cultivar, Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’ is an improvement. Soft caress only grows three to four feet, stays full and dense, and, as its name suggests, doesn’t have any of the spines the old leatherleaf produces. In late winter, this plant has upright racemes of small, bright yellow flowers. When the days are warm, over wintering pollinators are happy to find this food source growing nearby.
