Help! I think it's dying!

Hi, as a fairly novice gardener I am trying to tidy things up a bit in my rented accomodation.
When I moved in five years ago there was a lovely small tree right in the middle of the front garden. I have no idea what it's called but it had lovely pale green leaves but the fresh new tips were quite pink. At the end of each growing season I trimmed it to shape and every year it came back even thicker and stronger.
I actually took a picture of my kids in front of it before we went to a wedding in June last year.

As you can see it was very healthy!
My problem is that this year it isn't doing anything. It seemed to start budding quite early before we got some late frosts but now it just isn't showing any signs of doing anything and some of the tips have become quite black and brittle.
Is it just having a bad year?
Could it do with a good pruning?
Or has it just died?
Any advice or tips would be much appreciated. I'd hate to lose it.
Shelly

 

Hi Shelly
Can't quite see what sort of tree it is it's obscured by three little garden imps!Has it been watered recently? It's been quite a dry spell.

 

Looks like that willow I mentioned recently, the hakuro-nishiki

http://images.google.com/images?q=salix%20hakuro%20nishiki&hl=en-GB&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-49,GGLD:en-GB&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi


They really need lots of water - that's probably the problem - it may revive if you can water it well, but no promises!

 

I think Dendrobium's right. The only other thing that can go wrong is that the graft is usually fairly high up and can sometimes fail if damaged by wind.

 

Also known as a flamingo willow

 

My mother in law has just had one die on her after many years, it had exactly the same symptoms as yours. Sounds as if its gone to the great garden in the sky.

 

Should be looking something like this by now. :(