Gardening and Horticulture - Advice needed for dying holly tree

I have a holly tree that is about 8 feet tall and was very healthy last summer. In the fall, we removed some juniper ground cover surrounding it. Over the winter it has lost almost all of its leaves. It still has a couple of green limbs. Should I prune it or just give up and cut it down. If I cut it down, how difficult will the roots be to remove so I can replace it.

H Bgerman,

It's difficult to say what happened from here, but I suspect you may have damaged the roots when you removed the juniper. You can try and wait to see if the tree was just shocked and will grow new roots and then new leaves or you might want to remove it. I suspect you'll have to do some digging to remove the root system.

You can prune any dead wood at any time. Gently scrape a bit of the bark to see if there is any green just under it. If there is green there is some hope.

Newt