© The Dabney Nursery
Plant: Soft Touch - Holly
Holly · Ilex crenata 'Soft Touch'
Size: 1 gal
Light
Bloom
Mature size
More about this plant
Soft Touch is a dense, mounded evergreen Japanese holly whose soft textured glossy green leaves carry a silver mid vein and none of the usual holly spines, so it is comfortable to plant beside a walkway. It reaches about 2 to 3 feet high and wide, carries small fragrant greenish white flowers in spring, and holds black quarter inch berries on pollinated female plants right through winter. It tolerates drought, shade, air pollution, poor soils and clay, and works as a low hedge, a border, a foundation planting or a container specimen.
- Full Sun
- Grows to 3 ft tall and 3 ft wide
- Blooms in spring
- Hardy in USDA zones 5-9
- Evergreen foliage
- Native plant
Plant description
Soft Touch is a dense, mounded evergreen Japanese holly whose soft textured glossy green leaves carry a silver mid vein and none of the usual holly spines, so it is comfortable to plant beside a walkway. It reaches about 2 to 3 feet high and wide, carries small fragrant greenish white flowers in spring, and holds black quarter inch berries on pollinated female plants right through winter. It tolerates drought, shade, air pollution, poor soils and clay, and works as a low hedge, a border, a foundation planting or a container specimen.
- Flowers
- Small quarter inch dull greenish white fragrant flowers open in spring in clusters.
- Foliage
- Soft textured, glossy green leaves with an interesting silver mid vein and no holly spines.
- Fruit
- Black ornamental berries about a quarter inch long form on pollinated female plants and persist throughout winter.
- Bark & stems
- Bark light greenish-brown to gray and smooth; current-season stems green, turning grayish-green to grayish-brown, young stems densely hairy.
- Pruning
- Can be severely pruned to control size.
- Native range
- East Nepal, temperate East Asia, Japan and Korea
