Hello everyone,

"Long time reader, first time poster!" I'm new to gardening and I've popped in here on the forum when I've been searching around for info on some plants/gardening. I just bought my first home about 6 months ago and have my first garden (since mom's growing up). Everyone here is so knowledgeable - I've got a lot of great, helpful info from the forum (so a big general THANK YOU to everyone already!) But now... I need HELP!

Short version: Iceland poppies in large containers (planted with cleome hassleriana/spider flower) have stopped budding/blooming and foliage is now "dying". Are they going dormant or did the cleome kill them?!

The full story:

I bought a few big containers for the backyard patio (I have 3 dogs so I'm barracking sections of the existing garden bit by bit - containers are safe from the crazy dogs obviously). I planted some "creeping verbena" and Iceland Poppies in one large container. I saw the poppies at a local nursery and wanted them for the front yard but until I could get out there and revitalize the soil and do clean up I thought I'd put the poppies in the container and then move them to the front in the fall/next spring. Well, the container looked bare in the center so on-the-fly I bought a cleome hassleriana/spider flower and stuck it in the center, knowing absolutely NOTHING about them. From spring when I planted them until last week the poppies were amazing and beautiful! The two poppies (by two I mean I bought two each one gallon containers of poppies) kind of split up and became about 5 plants. Between all of them I would constantly have about 5-10 in bloom at a time! I know they only bloom for so long so I was expecting the blooming to cease around this time. Then... all the foliage started "dying" (turning brown, curling up, looking, well, dead). By chance, a few days before this happened, I finally read up on the cleome hassleriana and found many people who had planted them in their garden said they became invasive and choked out several perennials around them. Now, I've also read that some poppy varieties, oriental included, not only stop blooming around this time but the foliage completely dies... They're still alive, just dormant. But I couldn't find any mention of this happening with Iceland Poppies. So my question to all of you is this: does the foliage of Iceland Poppies die at this time and the plant goes dormant? Or did the cleome kill the poppies? In my panic of thinking they were dying, I dug up some of the small poppy plants and put them in smaller temp containers in hopes to save them. Now they're ALL pretty much gone (big container and small temp container plants). HELP! Are they dead or dormant? My only saving grace here is that I've collected quite a bit of seeds from them so I can have more next year.

Sorry for the length/wordiness of the post... Being that I'm new to all of this I want to make sure I don't leave out any info that may be important.

Any help/advise anyone can offer would be EXTREMELY appreciated!

David