Hellp John.

That sucks. I find dogwoods to be a picky bunch. I also have one which looked like it was dying after it was suddenly exposed to more sun after I removed an ash. It is now the best looking of my three. Go figure.

Try to water deeply when the ground is drying out. Don't flood it. These are not tolerant like bald cypress unfortunately.

I would probably have a year or so of patience with it.

Best of luck.

Thanks for the reply - even after cutting most of the berries off, the tree is still going downhill. In the last couple of years, during a dry spell, I lost two other dogwoods, each had a 5" diameter trunk and were probably 15 to 25 years old. The leaves wilted, turned yellow, and fell. It was late in the season, and I did not take much notice until the next spring when the trees -now dead - failed to leaf out. I was really upset the trees died, they seemed to flourish in previous years. Perhaps the emergence of the 17 year cicadas weakened the trees - the nearby ground looked like swiss cheese with so many holes in it.

But that was two years ago. Presently this dogwood seems sick and I can only suspect the roots were damaged by the work done on the sewage line.

Curiously, I discovered a peculiar "wrinkle" in the bark near the base-the wrinkle almost encircles the trunk. Maybe someone hit it with a lawn mower years ago and it healed up.

Any further advice would be appreciated.
-John