[color=#1a1a1b]My wife and I created a garden in a small space at the front of our house. I had to dig out a lot of heavy aggregate left over from the creation of the porch, driveway and sidewalk to make sure whatever she planted would grow. In the pic, you an see that on the left and right are poppies, and in the middle are petite knock out roses.[/color] [img]https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/1200x900/front_garden_7a9cc9938c2a36b6a4df390f8763cbfee8d1a344.jpg[/img]Now, to the problem. the two poppies on the left, closest to the driveway have died. The rose bush next to it, lost a lot of leaves, but is bouncing back. Before we put in more poppies or other plants, I want to be sure of what happened here and make sure it doesn't happen again. Here are some facts which may or may not help in diagnosing the problem. a) The cement is not new, the house was built in late 2018 and we moved in Jan 2019, so I don't think anything coming out of the cement is the issue. b) This area has had nothing in it, not even dirt. It was only aggregate rock, from when the sidewalk, porch, driveway and foundation were put in. c) When I took out the aggregate rock, I had to go down almost 20 inches before we got to dirt where these two poppies were put. (I wanted to be sure there would be dirt below all the plants, not rock) The area where the other poppies are did not need as much garden soil, as we only had to dig out about 8 inches of rock before we got to dirt. d) The entire thing was then filled with a 'Garden Soil' mix for [url=https://www.lowes.com/pd/Sta-Green-2-cu-ft-Garden-Soil/3353740]in ground use.[/url] We then put down weed screen material and a pine mulch. e) we didn't get the rain we needed, but my wife watered the plants regularly. As you can see, the poppies on the right, survived, the ones on the left did not. (The pic above is from when the garden was first completed. Since that time, in rapid fashion, the poppies on the left have died completely. No, not 'dormant', died. the ones on the right are still blooming.) One last fact should it be necessary f) we had the pest company come a week or so after planting and they sprayed all round the outside of the house, as well as sprinkling some sort of granules to get rid of ants. (We'd had ants in the house for the first time this year.) The granules got on the plants, but I used my 'leaf blower' to blow the granules off all the plants later the same day. And I cannot stress this enough, ONLY teh poppies on the left have died. (More pics of the garden being created are [url=https://honeydoconstruction.weebly.com/proj-4-front-garden.html]HERE.[/url]) What might be the issue here?

My wife and I created a garden in the back that has a problem. See pics. My wife created this memorial garden (ok, she chose the plants, I did the digging.) which sits against the neighbor's fence. I note that this is in direct flow from the neighbor's downspout, which floods this area when it rains. We expected the plants to get plenty of water during rainy seasons, but it would run off, downhill (a 20% grade, it covers the whole back yard. This is the only level place for a garden.) We did this June 18. I dug out the grass and moved it. We then put down some good garden soil the plants went into the ground the same day. (also used weed fabric and mulch on top.) There were some torrential rains this last weekend, but all the plants had been watered regularly before that day . The last two days, we discovered our butterfly bushes were dying. My wife is quite knowledgeable about plants and this is just foreign to both of us. You can see that all the other plants are doing well, it's just the butterfly bushes that are not. (We put in a butterfly bush in our other house and it grew tremendously. It got over 6 feet tall, and was at the end of a downspout.) Looking for some ideas of what could be causing this. [img]https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/2000x1504/img_1552_e660ddee41eb84f3dd9c4a90a86afa75f5b58bb1.jpg[/img] [i]Garden is approx 8-10 feet across the front. All the other plants are doing well, it's only the two butterfly bushes having issues. [/i] [img]https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/2000x1504/img_1553_267569bdfb0fce9c65fcf3c131f3334c46705def.jpg[/img] [i]Neighbor's downspout there in the side of his yard. You can see the green path of the water. [/i] [img]https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/2000x1504/img_1554_80004b438301c387e8635545cf34976504356174.jpg[/img] [i]butterfly Bush #1[/i] [img]https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/2000x1504/img_1555_730cf61b9fedea778c98fb159b7030ff6fb7742e.jpg[/img] [i]Butterfly bush #2[/i]