Sorry to hear your smoke bush didn't work out. We actually had a passerby - a total stranger who did not even live in our neighborhood - stop and ask to look at the garden because she was so wowed by the smoke bush . Of course, that was about eight years after planting it and it was about 12 ft high, 10 ft wide, and completely covered in "smoke."
As for your HT's: did you bury the bud unions? Did you take any other special measures? And did you have very much yo-yo weather?
