I fight these issues every day. People want to beautify. They dig along the foundation, put in pretty bushes and/or flower beds. Add a decorative border of landscape timber, garden wall block, or custom cast curb and fill up the area with wood chips. Add a soaker hose or sprinkler head or, worst of all, heavily water the wonderful new planting areas. It is often easier to do a raised bed with the timbers that will raise the new surface above the weep holes in the brick work.
Gee, I wonder why my basement leaks????
If your home is slab on grade you can get away with this as long as the finish surface is below the weep holes in the brick work or at least 6 inches below any siding or finish.
If your home is crawl space, you can try it but be very cautious and monitor the situation. If you are flooding or raising the humidity in the crawl, I would do away with the plantings.
If you have a full basement, I would avoid foundation plantings like the plague. Modify the thought if basement has been water PROOFED (not damp proofed) with drainage plane material and appropriate subsurface drainage. If you have all this, you may be hard pressed to give the bushes enough water as the water will go subsurface rapidly.