burning bush disease?

Joey Meister

I have two dwarf burning bushes on either side of the doorway, in the last few weeks they started getting brown tips, so i thought they needed more water, with watering this brown keeps spreading. as you can see in the first picture, i have had to remove branches as they died and the wood turned brittle, both are affected but the larger one is worse.both were planted in these spots about 4 years ago, they have done beautifully for the last three but this year they may not even get to turn bright red at the rate they are loosing leaves. so what is this and will they even come back next year?

Attached Thumbnails

       

Brent Ferris

The leaf tips do look typical of scorch - not enough water, but it looks like the bush has very little room to grow. Hard to be sure from the pics, but it looks like it is bounded by concrete beside the incoming Hydro line. If the roots have no where else to grow, high temperatures on concrete can cause the same result. How about pics near the base of the plant?

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