i planted just a couple of bamboo sprouts by my house and by the town hall to find them constantly repopulating on their own. no surprise there, as that is the usual behavior of bamboo (there's a ton of that stuff growing in my area irl, and that stuff gets crazy). after i got tired of seeing so many of them shoot up i started digging out sprouts and selling them instead of letting them grow.

at the same time i've had trouble keeping my flowers alive, particularly hybrids. for some reason even if i watered the dry ones, or even if it rained, most of them would die the next day anyway. sometimes even time traveling BACKWARDS to a previous day still ended in them dying. even flowers that grew nowhere near the bamboo patches would die. this wasn't happening before all the bamboo started growing. it doesn't completely make sense to me for there to be a connection, but after i cleared away all but four bamboo trees my flowers quit dying suddenly. i'm worried that growing more bamboo will start killing my flowers again, but i would really like just a few more around town. any ideas why this is going on? is there a real connection, or is there some kind of glitch? thanks for your time.

Maybe it has something to do with the ordinance you're currently using?

Change your town ordinance to beautiful so your flowers will stop dying.

You can control the bamboo using flowers, pathway tiles or shrubs around the bamboo.  I control mine using all of those.
It's about 2 to 3 spaces away from the bamboo to stop them from growing.

The bamboo grows like the fruit trees.   You can cut the top of the bamboo off for a nice look.  The bamboo will stop growing once it's chopped.

eh, i don't want to switch the ordinance, since i'm making great use of night owl for now. but that still doesn't explain watered flowers all dying.

i did notice that surrounding the bamboo with flowers (by accident) was preventing them repopulating, so i'll do that around the rest of them.

didn't think about just leaving them cut, i'll have to try that out.

thanks!

As  far as I'm aware, there isn't a connection between flowers and bamboo. Maybe you missed a few when you were watering?

nah, they were ones which i specifically watered and double- and triple-checked on. especially ones located directly next to my house, they were still sparkling when i saved and quit the game, but the very next day they were gone. AND before anyone asks, i carefully checked the dates and time to make sure i didn't miss a day by accident.

i still haven't seen this happening any more since i trimmed out most of my bamboo. i'm going to start introducing more bamboo gradually and see if anything happens. i wonder if there's some type of glitch involved.

You should really consider changing to the Beautiful ordinance and shifting your ACNL hours backwards to fit in what would normally be Night Owl-compatible.
True Time Travelling (in a certain meaning, anyway) refers to going backwards to play on a day that you already went through, that's what can/will kill your flowers. Forwards, however, doesn't cause as much trouble AFAIK.
Beautiful will, besides reducing wilt/weed rates, will also make your villagers participate in watering flowers.

that's weird that going backwards would kill them, since i could just re-water them once i go back (and i do). going forward i understand because even if dry flowers are watered, skipping any days will just kill them anyway, i've noticed. i guess because the game didn't get a chance to re-clock them as healthy or something, i'm not sure. i know it was that way in ww, it was always safer going backward than forward.

well it started happening again-- bamboo overgrowing and then flowers dying too easily-- and again i got rid of excess bamboo and my flowers are behaving again.

well i WAS reluctant to set the beautiful ordinance because i want to overhaul the flora in the town (and thus would lose a lot of trees/ flowers, which totally defeats the purpose), plus i wanted to keep the time aligned with my habits (especially with how late i go to the island and need retail to be open to sell off my collection), but i'm wondering if i should just go ahead and try it out for a little while and see what happens...

Honestly, I'd change your ordinance, you can always time travel back a few hours, or keep your game permanently 3 hours behind or something.

Good luck with your flowers!