Is it a spot where you have not grown anything before? Is your soil clay based? I ask because I found a spot near one of the corners of our house which I figured out later must NEVER have been planted, or anything. It was pure clay - I could have made dishes out of it, or bricks! I had it dug and dug, and added all sorts of amendments, and let it sit for 12 months. Then I planted a thug - we call it start jasmine here, but I don't think it is really a jasmine. Anyway, it is a large climbing vine which puts out small lovely, and incredibly fragrant flowers in late Spring. It will grow in the shade (my corner is just at the North side of our house). Well, being a thug which likes our climate and will grow anywhere, it grew fine - it has grown up to the top of our 3 story house several times (we had to take it all the way down once when the house was painted, and it just grew back up, and another time my DH hard pruned it because there were possums climbing up to the top of it, and scaring our tenants who live in the top story of our house - imagine living on the third story of an old Victorian house, and looking out the window to see a large possum staring at you!).

Anyway, I would try amending the soil and leaving it alone for a while. Does the area drain OK? You can test that. The other thing you can do is have the soil tested, to see what might be wrong with it. My FIL had a problem spot in his garden where everything died, had the soil tested, and low and behold, it was full of natural gas from an ancient gas line which had been sealed off (evidently not very well) and abandoned, but was still leaking into the soil.

Jackie

The soil is clay based and I had star jasmine there before That did well and right now I have some dwarf daffodils in that spot that do well. I'll try amending it. And see how it goes

Star jasmine requires less light than a rose will. Are you sure it is a soil issue and not light or perhaps root interference from other plants? If there are enough roots from other near by plants to rob the moisture from the roses, they will decline. Bulbs and the jasmine may still grow acceptably there as they don't require the water a rose does.

It's about part sun and there is no root competition. The roses seemed to defoliate within few weeks of planting which made me think it was soil related. There were dwarf palms there for short while and they seemed to struggle also