Funny you mention this, my privet hedge had a tough time this spring.... It just didn't take off like it normally would. The leaves came out kind of on the small, dark and glossy side and later a few began to dry up and fall off. There was no big spring flush of new growth. Now it seems to have recovered and is putting out the normal growth. I don't know. Maybe it was the really dry weather? I thought I was to blame- too many roots cut during bed prep, but no, even an untouched bush looked bad. I too though privet was un-killable. Maybe someone else knows something? Kato

Hadley, if the plant was sited in a place with poor enough drainage to rot the roots, it would have happened within a year or two of being planted - unless something has happened in the landscape to direct more water to that area. Your rhododendron looks like it is suffering from lack of summer and fall water to me. How is the soil in that area? If it's become hard and compacted, mulching/top dressing with compost will help to condition it.

We had that happen at one of our rentals, Was told this can happen sometimes as they don't last forever.. We also had this happen at our own house when we installed a gate, it disturbed the roots i think. Anyway, the whole hedge lost all it's leaves and looked dead. After 6 months, i was going to pull it out, but as i checked some of the branches by scrapping the bark off, some were still green but most were dead. I applied chicken manure pellets, blood and bone and seaweed solution every 3 weeks. Well now it's fully green and even flowered. So i suggest scrapping a little of those dead looking branches and checking if they are alive, if they are, give it some fertilizer and cross your fingers. Not sure what type of hedge it is, but ours is a Conifer.

I've heard about hedges getting bare in the middle and having all their leaves on the outside because of how they are pruned, but if it was fine and all of a sudden started losing leaves only on one side...I don't have a good explanation for that. But I'm not a hedge expert either. If you get to the point where you'd rather pull them out than look at them, you could try (in the spring) the drastic step of cutting one or a couple back (or all of them) to half size, which would remove all the foliage and (hopefuily) cause them to resprout fresh foliage and fill back in.