Dying Shrubs

While in the process of getting the leaves up, I decided to quickly trim out the shrubs in the front of the house.  The yews had a few fresh sprouts, and so did the barberry bushes.  Since it was still warm, I figured that it would still be OK to cut them back. 

But in addition to that I have noticed that over the course of the summer, two of the barberry bushes have been slowly dying.  It started with a branch where all the leaves were shriveling up, and I ended up cutting the dead branch off.  But every couple of weeks I have noticed another branch that was starting to shrivel up and die.

At first I had thought that the cause was from the rough winter we had last year.  So I thought that after cutting the dead stuff back it would take care of it.  But as it keeps getting more and more branches dying off, I am beginning to wonder if they have picked up some kind of disease.  The bad part would be that since all the bushes were planted at the same time, I don't know if I could find a replacement bush of the same size.  And if I can't that would mean having to cut down and dig up all six of them to make things look right. 

So I have done all the cutting back on the barberries (or would it be barberry bushes?) that I will for the year and we'll see how they manage the winter this year.  But I don't have a good feeling about things and that come springtime, I'll be deciding how to improve my curb appeal.