Not knowing where you are located makes it very difficult to help. Branch die back in redbuds is quite common - in my experience - especially if you had a colder than normal winter. There really isn't much choice except to prune out the obviously dead branches. The tree will look decidedly odd for a while but should fill in pretty quickly over the course of the summer.

I always wait until my redbud leafs out to prune back, just to be sure I am not removing live branches.

To add your location information to your name so that it will appear in all your posts:

Go to Your Houzz in upper right of every page, click Edit Profile, and on the left side click advanced settings. Well down the advanced settings page is a blank labeled Climate Zone for Garden Forums along with a link to find your zone.

Then return to the top of the page and click Done Editing.

Agree with the above-redbud is not reliably hardy in the north or anywhere that's had cold winter.

+oM

Older boring regular redbuds on my street always seem to have some dieback. Young vigorous ones seem not to. I bet transplant shock and your tree recovers in the next year or two. How tall is that fella? It must have been a bit of work planting it so I feel your pain!

Hi again

Thank you for your responses.! I've updated my info. I'm in western BC, just outside of Vancouver so zone 8b. The tree is about 10 ft tall and I had 2 big guys help plant it . We planted 3 other trees as well, when we created the garden. A golden Raintree, an akebono Cherry and a Bradford pear all of which are doing great.