Help with my Gardenia

Hey everyone. I have what I believe is a crepe gardenia in my backyard. It's quite old from the looks of the trunks, and is oriented 4 plants across to form somewhat of a hedge. Not too long ago, I trimmed it back. It had problems with caterpillars and snails/slugs, for which I treated a month ago. That seemed to do the trick, but then it got hard scale. I treated that as well. It seemed to be doing fine, but I recently noticed a new problem. Many of the leaves (mostly toward the bottom of the plant) have started to turn yellow and drop. Some of the leaves have developed brown spots, almost resembling "burnt" leaves, but the spot doesn't get prolonged periods of sun as it is situated against the NW side of my house (which is 2-story). Also, some of the leaves have curled upward. It kind of looks like the tips are curling inward, but upward instead of downward. It closely resembles what my ficus hedges did when I had the fig whitefly. It is about to bloom a bunch of flowers, but I'm not sure what's going to happen to it? I wish I had pics, but I haven't fixed my digital camera yet. Please help!

It sure does sound like white fly. Just got through spraying citrus, hibiscus and gardenia here for white fly...nasty lillte buggers. Now guess I'll have to do the neighbors citrus too or the flies will just come back...every 10 to 14 days till nothing moves when you shake a branch...sheesh.

How often do you feed the gardenias?

I don't really feed them too often. I fed them about 2 weeks ago with a neutral 10-10-10 morganite spread evenly. Do you think that might be causing the leaf yellowing? This fertilizer couldn't burn if it wanted to. What would you recommend for whitefly? I'm assuming that's what is causing the leaf-curl, but what about the browning and yellowing?

Did you water in the fertilizer? gardenia feeder roots are really near the surface. the frass from white flies will cause leaves to yellow and fall as it coats the leaves blocking photosynthesis. I use liquid sevin per directions for whitefly...sometimes it takes a few apps to get them all....tip, spray the ground under the plant as the flies love to settle on the moist ground also.

The fertilizer bag's instructions stated it didn't need to be watered in, but we got rain that evening so that probably did the trick. Yeah the roots are quite shallow. I've even had new plants pop up growing from the roots. I actually pulled them out and transplanted them to small pots and they are growing!
I'll pick up some liquid sevin and go at those pests. Thanks for the direction moonhowl, you've been a great help with many of my pest issues - that and you're quite witty and sharp. What a combination!

Thank you, sir. They say wisdom comes with age,,,got the age...waitin' on the wisdom...LOL