A couple of years back I bought a crape myrtle tree to put on our balcony. It was a decent-sized tree (8 feet high) and we had it potted in a 35 gallon (130 liter) pot. For two years it was a beautiful addition to our balcony, with dark green leaves in summer, and bright red leaves in autumn. Despite not yet getting it to flower (the last two summers were unusually short) it was a great tree.

The problem is that I completely forgot to water it during this past winter. During the summer when it was in full leaf I would give it about a gallon of water each day, and in the first two winters I would water it every few weeks. But this winter I completely forgot. I figure it must have gone at least 3 months without any water from me, and depended entirely on natural precipitation. I realized my mistake when I did the spring pruning and saw the small branches breaking off in my hand.

It is now the beginning of May and there is no sign of new leaf buds. That in itself isn't that unusual because this tree buds late and other trees of the same species in the nearby garden center also have not yet put out leaf buds. So I figure there is a chance some part of the tree is still alive.

So my question to gardening experts out there is, assuming there is some life left in the tree (in the main trunks probably), what should I do to save the tree? Do I cut it all the way back to the main trunks and let it put out entirely new branches? I feel like an idiot and I paid a lot for this tree and it was really nice...

I should add that I live in western Switzerland and we had two weeks of very cold weather this winter (lows of about 10F). The tree had survived the two previous winters outdoors, but maybe this one was too much?