I'm really torn up about these expensive, once beautiful Leucospermum that I'm killing.

They were doing fine in their 5 gallon pots. If they were a little dry and the branches started drooping if water and they'd pop back up by the next day. 

 

I finally got them in the ground 3 weeks ago.  Native soil is loamy sand, no clay. I back filled (around an inch border around root mass) with native soil/pumice mix. I mounded them up for drainage.  I did not have auto irrigation on them for a little longer than a week. I hand irrigated as slow as I could but most of it would run off.  

A week ago I added 3, 1 gallon per hour drip emitters to each plant.  20 minute run time, 4 times a week. 

They've only declined since going into the ground.  I'm wondering if I let them dry out too much before installing the drip emitters.  We have been in a heat wave the last week ( Southern California coastal) so I put up a 50% shade cloth over each plant.   I misted the continuously drying leaves hoping to rehydrate them.  Any suggestions?  The first two pictures are from 4 days ago, the last two pictures are from today. 

Take a look over the advise offered in the " Plant Care " section of the following link:
http://www.californiaprotea.org/protea-care/

Have also lost Proteaceous plants planted in the summer in the past.

I think I'll pull them and see if I can get them to recover in pots.  There's a few tips in there that I missed.  I didn't dig a new hole even close to that big and I probably compacted it way too much when backfilling.  Thanks for the link!