Winter Damage on the Red Osier Dogwood

The dogwoods are a good example of how hard the road side is on trees and bushes. On the North slope (see first image) all the dogwoods look healthy with vigorous growth. In the square on the southside of the berm that is over 40m from the road the red osier dogwoods are just surviving with significant winter die-back(see second image). The Pagoda dogwoods are doing even worse in the square with some dead and others only budding along the main trunk. In the bush area closest to the road but still over 25m away from the cars, the dogwoods only show signs of growth low down on the branches (see third image). Since there was little snow build up last winter in this exposed location, the limit of growth along the branches probably represents the snow depth for much of the winter.