california lilac (victoria variety)

Hedge planted in cool, damp oceanfront property had entire bottom of plant going brown last year. Severe pruning was done to remove, leaving only top green leaves which did flower. They are about 8 years old. Should they be removed or will any lower growth return?

 

was there a salt-spray windstorm in the last couple of years?

a sudden cold "outflow" temperature drop (like happens here in BC coastal areas esp at the mouth of the big inlets and valleys - we had one Nov 2014)

did they get over-watered (irrigated)?

overfed? (run-off from lawn feed?)

I know these shrubs to do well in public plantings - they certainly get rangey looking (some outside of a public library I know of at the coast) - and I believe that they do not prune well if done aggressively. I have restored other shrubs (rhodo specifically) using the 1/3 rule. However, maybe that's not your thing - you want to enjoy the garden now without it looking like a construction site.

How about pruning it up and plant some ferns or salal or something underneath (I am not an expert pruner and I don't know the root habit of this California lilac - will digging around them disturb roots?)

here are some links - just google "pruning california lilac victoria" exactly like that and it will bring up previous threads on this UBC forum.

https://www.artsnursery.com/catalog/california-lilac

here is an interesting conversation from 2009 on this UBC forum
http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=50070

and another about dead Calif Lilac
http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=82872

 

"Cool and damp" and Ceanothus don't go together well, they are happiest in well drained, rather lean soils in full sun. Could be a slow and persistent root problem getting worse over time, such as root rot from the damp or more generally just a steady decline on an ultimately unsuitable site. They won't break much from older thicker wood, so if the dead limbs that were removed were sizeable it's unlikely you'll see much new growth fill in the lower bits.

 

yes I agree with Woodscmoe (spell sorry if wrong) - cool and damp not where I'd expect to see these - the public plantings I know of may have water but well drained and on a slope facing SE, and gravel etc.

perhaps you go back to what your design objective is (privacy or ... ?) AND what already grows well in that particular spot -
people say ferns but not all are damp (sword can be dry shade for example) -

 

Plantings I see often around here did the same thing recently. So something happened within the last several months or so to kill approximately the bottom half of leaves and twigs of this shrub throughout the region. One of these examples is a specimen I planted on Camano Island in a patch of salal around the base of a Douglas fir, on a site where these two species are dominant - in other words a location that drains well and sits above the salmonberry-alder association that covers lower, damper ground just down the slope. The ceanothus quickly grew well above my head and then got this browning and bareness of the lower section, which I didn't really pick up on until after reading the original post here.