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