Ceanothus

One of my gardening clients who appears to have more money than sense had her garden landscaped a couple of years before I started doing the maintenance. The frontage consists of railings with about 2' of slabs behind to the house wall in which she has a couple of containers and then three semi-circular beds cut out of the slabs into each of which the landscaper planted an evergreen ceanothus (two types, one is Italian Skies) and an herbaceous clematis. The ceanothus are trained up the wall and are about 5' tall now and have two or three side branches. They are losing their leaves, IMO this is because the clematis is too vigorous to climb up a wall trained shrub and is blocking the light to the ceanothus. Am I right that this could be the case?

 

Ceonothus are mainly sun lovers, so I think you are probably right if the clematis is covering large areas of it.

 

Thanks. I'm actually wondering now if the landscaper wanted the clematis to scramble over the ground in the semi-circular beds, but the client has constantly told me the clematis has to be tied in so it looks neat. I'm going to be telling her in the next couple of weeks that all three ceanothus have to come out I think.

 

What do you mean by "herbaceous clematis"? Like Clematis tangutica? I cut them right down each year, not train them year-on-year.