Please can anyone tell me if there is any hope for this fire bush?

Could this have been caused by verticillium wilt? If so, I don't think there's a cure/treatment.

Thankyou we did see that on a site on the internet and wondered if that could be the case, although there are new leaves growing right at the bottom of the bush

Thankyou chickweed for your advice

No probs. Word of warning though - if it is verticillium wilt the plant will die. I had a cottinus which had a second spurt of life but then died. Foolishly I planted a new one in its place, which then also died as the fungus lives in the soil. I know better know and sadly there's still nothing there despite it being a few years, as I'm too scared of losing a plant again! I am now without a smoke bush in my garden sadly.

What a shame. They are lovely shrubs.

But there is growth near the bottom - did the shrub leaf out early, and then we got overnight frosts? That did happen here in the south a couple of weeks ago, but not sure what the weather's been doing where you are - if you're in the north, it would have been colder,though this sort of damage from frost would mean a few nights' frost, not just one night...

Ok thank you for your help. I think we’ve decided to get rid of it now but as you’ve said we can’t replace it with another one so will have to rethink what we put in its place

Okay well if you think it might be verticillum wilts, that would rule out Acer palmatum as a replacement too. How about a Berberis, one of the purple/red leaved ones like B. atropurpureum or B. ottawensis, if you wanted something with similarly coloured leaves.

Cultures of Streptomyces lydicus or Bacillus amyloliquifaciens would help, but I don't know if these are available in the UK, yet.

Thank you all for your your help. We are in Kent by the way and didn’t have many frosts this winter so I think it’s doubtful that frost was the cause