I agree with Janet.... unfortunately there is no sure way to be sure exactly what happened. I noticed you mentioned re-potting with scotts potting soil... ordinary commercial potting mix is too heavy for AVs and you might have had waterlogged soil that led to root rot. Also, during repotting, you may have cut/damaged some roots to give the infection a toe-hold that was then exploited in the too heavy soil By the way, this sudden death sometimes this happens after the soil becomes very dry and then is too quickly watered. Ardy

I know I'm on a hobbyhorse, but I spent decades studying shoot growth, mainly in pines, and have some strong convictions on how best to approach and describe it. First, you need a model of normal development. Then when something unusual happens, you can intuit what is causing it. Example -- in northern pines of the simplest structure (ponderosa, strobus, Austrian, Scots, etc.) the apical meristem inside the leading bud tip forms a winter bud in the late summer. This goes dormant. Next spring, it comes out of dormancy after receiving enough cold for its chilling needs, and then enough heat to stimulate cell division. Gotta have both. Then the bud elongates into a shoot, exposing the fascicles that overwintered in the bud as miniatures. During elongation, a new bud is forming to repeat this cycle. Length of the new shoot is determined by the number of fascicles formed in the bud the previous year. These fascicles have a very strong tendency to space out on the new shoot evenly at a distance apart that varies by species.Drought in the spring prevents the full distance from being achieved (and needles reaching their full length). That's why transplants with injured roots have "brush" shoots with short needles jammed together. That damaged tree will probably put few new fascicles into its next bud, so next year's shoot will have normal fascicle spacing but fewer of them, and will also be shorter than it should. But the next bud should have normal number of fascicles, and full spacing between them, and therefore a nice long shoot should develop from it. This "mind-model" does have nuances and ins-and-outs; but it's a good starting point for understanding simple pines. More complex pines like contorta, southern pines, jack and Monterey take more work to figure out. Spruces and firs are much like simple pines in structure. Trees without buds (Cypress family) are another story. As for nutrients -- the elongating shoot produces hormones that cause the older needles to export carbs to the growth areas. By mid-summer the new shoots are living off their own photosynthesis; and then they start to store the excess so next year they can help out the newer shoots now appearing. This goes easier with a blackboard! Don't mean to diss anyone, I just feel strongly that bad vocabulary creates muddy thinking.

"like that would be a big problem for you.. lol ... that would just be a new opportunity " Ken not the case at all.... A lot of my cultivars revolve around this tree for filtered shade. This tree is a big player in the over all design and well being of many plants. I will pass along the only benefit that these gum balls afford. Put them under your Hostas. The slugs and snails cannot tolerate the sharp spiny needles. Since that discovery I always have the best looking Hostas. Dave

i was in the same frame of mind on Mother's Day weekend after backing up my husband's car and scratching the heck out of the side of it on overgrown yews that were making the driveway more and more narrow. We went at them with a lopper ($30 from Home Depot). I cut up all the branches fairly small. I could fit one bush into 2 lawn bags once I cut the branches into smallish pieces. I dumped 5 bushes at the town compost pile. My plan was to plant hostas in between to mostly disguise the stumps till they grew in. But we decided to heck with it, and we dug up all the stumps too. It was not hard, but I should add that my husband and I are avid weightlifters, so perhaps we are outside the norm in thinking this was easy. We decided to go for it since the neighbors had a dumpster and said we could put anything in it - so there went the stumps! In future summers I'd like to do the same thing to all the yews in front of my house. At the very least, I have to do a lot of trimming now, because they are getting really big. Same logic - if they survive some heavy pruning, great. If not, then next year look into new shrubs.