The leaves are all showing signs of burn. Most likely from the heat and sun. Another issue is, watering over the leaves when the sun is out, or when the weather changes from hot and sunny to wet in short periods. This over time damages the leaves.
Prune off the damaged areas and the shrub should recover eventually, provided the other issues of possible inconsistent watering or even water-logging, which can also cause branches to droop and leaves to turn brown.
The camellia has been thriving and flowering for three years in regular soil (not ericaceous), so soil is not the problem. The plant is sited in a patio garden surrounded by housing, so it gets some hours of direct sun, but not much. The intense heat and strong sun this summer may have been too much for the plant.
I grew a camellia in a pot in full shade and it flowered well and it stayed dense. Why do you think the neighbour's plant is straggling and growing outwards?
It looks fairly hard up against the fence so it’s bound to grow outwards as it can’t grow backwards, it would need a good half metre behind to do that, so it depends on what ‘not that narrow’ means. In a pot, unless the pot is hard up against a wall or some such, the shrub would at least have space to grow in all directions as it would naturally. I’ve had a large camellia in a pot for 3yrs in full shade and it’s not straggly and didn’t suffer any heat damage despite my summer temps being much higher, so I suspect insufficient water and drying out much quicker than thought. Not helped by some sun and the brick raised bed, which would retain heat and pump it out overnight.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Camellias are actually quite drought resistant, so if she's been watering regularly that might not be the issue.
The two most important things for camellias are 1. good drainage and 2. not to plant too deeply. If she didn't tease out the rootball upon planting, it may be retaining too much water there. And if she added compost at the base, it may now be too deep even if it wasn't previously.
You said it flowered in spring so it's probably a japonica rather than a sasanqua or a sinensis. They get huge and I don't think will ever thrive in that small raised bed unless it has access to the soil on the back side of the fence. If she's committed to a camellia, she might try a sinensis, which tend to stay much smaller (and you can use the leaves for tea!).
Assuming that the damage was sun scorch, we gave the plant some tlc today and pruned back a quarter or so. It's covered in buds, so I think it will be fine, if not dense. The advice on the forum is usually to not feed an ailing plant. However as it's putting on buds, would you feed now or hold off until spring?
It turns out that the plant was usually part shaded but the shading plant recently died so that camellia was exposed to more sun than usual. The neighbour will plant another shrub in to create more shade.
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Prune off the damaged areas and the shrub should recover eventually, provided the other issues of possible inconsistent watering or even water-logging, which can also cause branches to droop and leaves to turn brown.
The two most important things for camellias are 1. good drainage and 2. not to plant too deeply. If she didn't tease out the rootball upon planting, it may be retaining too much water there. And if she added compost at the base, it may now be too deep even if it wasn't previously.
You said it flowered in spring so it's probably a japonica rather than a sasanqua or a sinensis. They get huge and I don't think will ever thrive in that small raised bed unless it has access to the soil on the back side of the fence. If she's committed to a camellia, she might try a sinensis, which tend to stay much smaller (and you can use the leaves for tea!).