Too much rain? did you over fertilize? For a couple years my anemones looked awful, gray, black blotches. Finally it dawned on me not to sprinkle so much Osmacote (sp?) around in the Spring. So I haven't since and they have recovered.

IME the fungus that grows in mulch doesn't bother plants since it is feeding on dead wood and isn't interested in live plants. Can you add a photo? Sometimes that can help diagnose a problem.

Some possibilities:
Where are you? Much of the east coast and the upper midwest have gotten huge amounts of rain, and if your soil doesn't drain well, your plants may be suffering from being waterlogged.

Might you have voles, a type of rodent that tends to tunnel under snow, mulch, and shallowly in soil? Push gently against the soil around the sick plants and if it collapses in at least some places, vole damage is probably the problem. There are threads in the Hosta, Perennial, and New England Forums (and perhaps elsewhere) with discussions of voles.

Did you do any improvement to the soil in your garden bed such as adding compost before planting (not just to the planting hole, which isn't recommended), and have you had a soil test done? Often a plant will grow fine in the soil from the nursery, but in later years when it tries to grow into the soil in the bed, if there are problems, the plant will decline. Many states have services through cooperative extension or the land grant universities that will do soil tests. I think that Cornell will do mail-in samples, though I have not used that service.

Best wishes figuring out your problem. Gardening can often be frustrating since we are dealing with living things, but the rewards are worth the frustrations IMO.

Thank you so much for the helpful tips. In follow up, I do have a couple of blooms just beginning but, the plants that were far gone have not come back. We do have a lot of subterranean dwellers (we call them moles) this year. I will look at the other forums for advice on those. I am in central Indiana and we have had lots of rain so, once the daily deluge ended I let the beds dry out some....I will keep trying. The rewards are too great to miss out on!