Garden Pests and Diseases: Bougainvillea 'Orange King' has puckered leaves, 4 by garden18

garden18 wrote:
My friend tried to grow this bougainvillea variety as a ground cover, pegged shoots to the ground, sheared off vertical growth, plants looked healthy for a while but are not looking good lately with scrawny new growth and puckered mature foliage. Can anyone diagnose what is going on? I should also mention that originally there was a lawn here that did fine. Lawn was ripped out and replaced with ceanothus that struggled mightily, one plant dying after the next. Bougainvillea (planted more than a year ago) is not dying but looks sad. The area where it is planted is a small, gentle slope.