Hi casnavy, Welcome to Garden Web. I'd suggest you try asking at the link below. If they can't help, you might also try The Fruit and Orchards Forum. Sue Here is a link that might be useful: Trees Forum

I think the plant will benefit from some mulch too. It will help the soil remain moist longer. Do not water the leaves, just the soil in the early morning hours. You know, I am not sure where you are located but in some of the pictures, I thought I saw something that resembled sand. If your soil is sandy, remember to water more often. Wholesaler sometimes put little phosphorus to produce purple bloom colors in new plants and this can affect the leaves, which turn dark reddish, purplish colors. Adding a 1/4" to 1/2" layer of organic compost or composted manure will help replenish these. When the plant goes dormant in the Fall/Winter, dispose of the dried out leaves in the trash to prevent spreading fungi. Insects that eat leaves like to hide during the day so look with a flashlight at night (ck under the leaves) and if you do not detect any insects and the damage does not change, assume that the insect flew the coop and do not worry anymore.

The brown spots appear to be common hydrangea leaf spots, sometimes a fungal infection called Cercospora Leaf Spot. See here for more info: http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1212/ANR-1212.pdf Most of the time, this is caused by overhead watering. If you do this, try watering the soil instead and do it very early in the mornings. Clean up plant debris that may contain spores, discard leaves in the Fall on the trash and, if you can afford it and the problem is bad enough in your opinion, replace the mulch too. You can also apply fungicides and the article mentions some of them but they can be $$ expensive so I just follow those suggestions when it comes to the ones that I too have with leaf spot. I am not sure about the loss of leaves. Sounds mysterious since you have not mentioned anything that would account for that. Normally, this would require something like not watering it (the rootball dries out for example), winter damage or applying insecticides or fungicides to the plant or to nearby plants. Leaf spot can make the plant loose some of these leaves as they first appear to have the lesions and sometimes the leafs brown out and fall. But usually the infestation is not THAT bad. If Bluebird lost the leaves in this way then you may want to spray after all as that is kind of a big thing in my opinion. I normally see this issue on mine by late August or in September so this is kind of early. And I just live with the problem until the plant goes dormant in December. Then I carefully cut the leaves off without touching the stems (invisible 2016 Spring flower buds will usually be near the end of the stems).

Term is actually spelled "heeling in", of course. Anyway hydrangea still being viable after a month out in the air seems doubtful. And because this plant adheres to supports, will therefore be hard to get off the tree it probably isn't feasible to recover and keep making use of the top. Also you will have to have some other place to place the now liberated - and very clumsy to handle - top attractively. Yet much of the value of it having grown for 40 years will have been lost if you cut the top down, in order to make the rest of the plant portable. I would look at the root situation and decide if I wanted to bother with separating it from most of its own top, as well as the roots of the conifer, and lugging it to a new planting site, digging a big enough hole to spread to roots out, and so on. It might be better to just let the specimen go. Also when tall conifers in my area topple effects of root pathogens often become visible, making it apparent reduction of the root system by these agents was the cause of the tree no longer being able to remain upright. If it turned out the tree was taken out by something like Honey Fungus for instance then the hydrangea could be infested as well, or some of the fungus might get transported to the new planting site in soil attached to the hydrangea. This would not be desirable.