Beginner Gardening: Please Help: Plants dying and I don't know why, 0 by danludwig

danludwig wrote:
The holly isn't completely dead yet, so I took a close up where you can see both dead and green foliage. Some of the leaves are blackish, but not slimy. The rest are light to medium brown. Some of the green ones are browning at the tips. It's too far gone to save though, so I will lookup my ag office and take it there to find out what happened. What kind of costs am I looking at for this?

As far as putting in peat /amendments / raising everything up, yes, I was going to remove everything first to make sure the new soil is well mixed throughout. The two sides of my house that have all of this landscaping face the southeast and southwest, and the clay gets very parched and cracked at the top from the full sun. Part of my reason for doing this is to keep the soil from separating from my house's foundation, and to grade / slope the soil in the retaining wall to better drain water away from the house (so it's not just for the plants). I'm saving a section of the tilled-up lawn as a halfway home for the plants while this is being done, and plan to move them back afterwards.

I'll post a photo of the gaillardia in question right after this.