To answer that question we need to know what the 'ivy' is. Can you post a picture? English Ivy is evergreen but there are lots of climbers which are deciduous and would look dead in the Winter.

Hi Clairedublin. We are also in SE Michigan and are dismayed at the appearance of what we think is English Ivy on the side of our home. All of the leaves are brown and falling off and there appears to be no new growth occurring. We are painting our house in May and need to decide if we should remove all the ivy (as you can see there is a ton of it) since it looks horrid, or hope it recovers and skip painting this portion of the house. Any advice/recommendations would be much appreciated!

Maggiespurge - I can't see the leaf shape of your vine very well but its habit doesn't look like English ivy (Hedera helix). Ivy doesn't usually trail back down once it gets to the top of its support. If you could post a close up we could id it accurately for you. Same goes for claredublin - without an accurate id we can't make meaningful comments on the plant and it issues.

floral_uk... see attached shot. thanks!

OK - yes that is Hedera helix. It's native here and very common but I've never seen it cascading down like it does on your house.

If it's alive it's perfectly safe to cut it to the ground while you paint the house. And if it's dead you need to cut it down anyway. So either way it can be removed for the painting.

It could be that the winter of 2014 did considerable damage to English ivy in SE Michigan.

Attached are two photos. It is the same Ivy as MaggieSpurg posted.
It was really weird, everywhere the ivy was died, including a smaller tree that fell down also.
My questions would be:
Is this just because of the bad winter?
Will the Ivy grow back?
Could someone have poisoned the ivy?
Thanks
Clare

I'm having the same problem with my ivy. I live in central New Jersey and im not sure if it's mites or a fungus. Any help would be appreciated.