Plant identification request

[Dilbertian]

I have found a couple of uninvited inhabitants in my garden, and need to decide whether to leave or evict them.

One has small, soft, round, pale leaves in groups of 6 or 8 on stems growing out of branches. It is spindly, has a trunk or two, but looks shrubby, rather than tree-like. It's leaning on another plant, and is about 1.5m tall.

The other is definitely a tree of some sort. It's growing up through the centre of a very thuggish Solanum (hence I haven't noticed it before). It is at least 2m tall. The leaves are stiff, dark green on top and pale green on underneath. The stems that bear the leaves are reddish on top and green underneath. The spines of the leaves are pink underneath the leaves.

The first one is a snowberry, Symphoricarpos, insignificant pale pink or white flowers followed by white or pink berries. It's a vigorous suckering shrub, so if you decide to keep it, keep a good eye on it.

The other is a Viburnum or Cotoneaster - probably the latter, which is grown mainly for the red berries.

Bother! Both of those are plants that I like and was thinking of buying for the garden.

But the Snowberry is wedged right up against my Philadelphus, which has already struggled with the very thuggish Solanum trying to grow on, over and through it.

And the Cotoneaster/Viburnum is wedged right up against the Solanum, and is already growing up through it.

I wonder, if I hack prune the Solanum right back, just leaving the branches at the back, would that give the Snowberry room to thrive without stressing the Philadelphus?

There are a lot of varieties of cotoneaster, and that looks like it could be one of the big tall ones - cotoneaster cornubia.

I wonder if you could propagate the snowberry form a sucker and then get rid of the original?

It does seem that robust control of the solanum could kill two birds with one stone.

I've come to the conclusion that there's three stages of garden creation:

1. Plant a large number of plants and be delighted when they grow vigorously

2. Start pruning hard in order to stop them overcrowding each other

3. Accept the inevitable and realise that that you have to decide which of you favourite plants are the real favourites, and which will have to be removed.

Usually one tries to stay at stage 2 for far too long.