The whole thing looks very poor - if it was a lot fuller last summer then something has happened to it since. Perhaps the dead twigs are due to fire blight but otherwise it will not be very easy to tell looking only at these pictures.

One thing that can be seen is that you have buried it with the cobbles. Those should be pulled back so that the crown of the tree is at soil level.

first ... you ALWAYS remove dead parts .. and you remove it surgically ... not chop it.. especially if you need to be on a ladder to chop it .. lol ...

but the dead parts are the least of the problems with that tree ..

pull back the rocks.. and show us the root flare... if its not there .. pull back the soil until you find us.. and snap a pic ...

what is your native soil .. does it drain ...

how did you plan tit ... did you bare root it.. to find out if roots were proper?? ...

did you amend the planting hole ...???

drip irrigation is rarely proper for a tree.. you water deeply and let near dry .. before you water again .. on new transplants in my MI ... i water about once a month if there was no rain ... there is no tree that needs watering every third day or so ...

is there landscape cloth under the rocks.. if so.. remove at least a 6 foot circle around the tree to allow proper movement of AIR and water in the soil ...

once you do that.. you can dig 3 to 6 inch holes around the tree to FIND out about moisture at root depth ...

i might also wonder about how much day heat the rock retains.. deep into the night .. when most plants get a recovery period ....

again.. the dead part is the least of the trees problems ...

it is incredibly stressed... it is not hungry.. fert is not a response at this time ...

ken

Hey guys, thanks for the comments so far! And yes when I got the tree last year, it was the last one available in the area, and it looked crooked and bad, so they gave me a discount on it. HOA was on me to finish my landscaping so I just went with it. I've been trying to straighten it out with the straps.... it was a LOT more crooked than it is now haha!

Its really bad clay soil around here. What I did was I removed the wire cage and burlap, unclumped the roots around the perimeter slightly, and sat it directly ontop of the clay soil. I then built up the berm around it with mostly planters mix from a local landscaping supply.

Specifically where would you cut to remove that dead part? And would you just cut it with a saw?

The original photos were from 2 weeks ago. It looks like there is some new growth on it. I took 2 more photos showing this, as well as the trunk/crown. It looks like the soil swelled up slightly around the crown... I remember the crown sticking up above the dirt slightly more I thought:

@ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5 and @Embothrium what do you think about my last post about the tree?

I don't think that we have yet seen the root flare; more soil needs to be gently pulled away from the base of the trunk. Embo said that the rocks have to be pulled back, and if that is some kind of landscape fabric under the rocks, that has to be pulled back too, at least six feet away from the tree.

what lisa said

In addition to our drought this summer, it's been through two 70 degree temp swings, 1 last October and again in April. Your tree is still alive and that's something! I agree you need to pull back the landscaping fabric and make sure it's being adequately watered in our ongoing high 90 degree heat wave. I'd not fully rely on your drip system, physically check the root zone moisture and hand water it once a week if it needs it.

It can be rather optimistic to expect healthy plant growing in dead soil. Your soil is dead, no organic matter, no soil organisms under all those rocks and asphalt. Uncover as much of it as you can and add organic mulches on regular basis. BTW Amelanchier doesn't like clay soil too much, it likes good drainage. Watering it too often on such a soil is not good idea.

I have an autumn brilliance service berry in its 2nd year planted. It has struggled this year, but finally seems to be getting going. It had a lot of die back though. I’m in a new build in Northern Colorado, and the soil is clay. Rock hard, hole doesn’t drain for a week clay. My first serviceberry died and when I pulled it out, I found it was sitting in water. The top few inches felt dry, and down at the bottom of the roots was foul water. So it drowned. I water my new one WAY less, and so far it seems to be hanging in there. Serviceberries also tend to get chlorotic, so be sure to be proactive to keep it from happening. I’d cut the dead branch, and as the others recommend and pull back the weedcloth and rocks, keep it watered but not drowning, and hope for the best.