I haven't had much luck with Emerald gaiety...mine grew more as a small groundcover / creeper and never did much of anything - perhaps the crown gall disease was to blame -but I chucked them all. I do have two Sarcoxie Euonymus on my property - one in full sun from midday on, and the other in full shade. They both have done well for me with the exception of scale on the one in full shade last year. In full shade, I've seen no blooms but it hasn't established as long as the other has. The full sun Sarcoxie gets a beautiful carpet of purple flowers on the groundcreepers, but it took a good 4 years to get there. It branches both vertically and horizontally along my 4 1/2 foot fence. I trim the branches at fence height, so I don't know how tall this plant will actually climb on an arbor or trellis. It's a nice evergreen branching habit along my fence. This was one of the first plants in my yard as a newbie, and I couldn't be happier. No problems with scale in the sunny location (keeping my fingers crossed). Unfortunately, my new rescue dogs like to pottie where the branches creep as a groundcover, causing dieback in those areas, so I didn't get the flowers this past year.

The pot is 12 inch diameter and 10 inch high. I re-potted it last fall. The plant itself (leaves) look o.k. I have another clematis (The President) in same size pot and that one did just fine, it had a lot of blooms. The problem clematis is Will Goodwin. The pot is made from plastic and it is in another decorative pot. Today I took the clematis out of the decorative pot and I saw two slugs. Could that be a problem somehow?

Yep heard about the purported allelopathic effects of certain types of sunflower seed hulls but it hasn't affect my Durandii which is planted under a feeder that I keep sunflower seeds in. It may be the specific type of sunflower seed that we are using. I say if it ain't broke don't fix it. I agree with GG that it looks like it is doing great so don't sweat it.

They may have migrated as juveniles (very different appearance from the adults) from last year's plants and overwintered on this guy. To be perfectly honest, there is really no good explanation why these kinds of insect pests appear. For example, where do aphids come from? They don't fly and can't 'walk' into a garden and if you or cold weather have eliminated any eggs or haven't brought in anything new that was infected, just what causes them to miraculously appear? I swear it must be something like spontaneous generation :-)