For certain. With your hand pruners, simply cut off all dead stuff as far back as it is dead-all the way to the"trunk" probably. Then, with same tool , simply shorten up those bits that extend outward from the plant. Where each cut is made, two new sprigs of growth will form.

BTW, none of these plants appear to be "ailing". I see bright green new growth all over the place. Likely some kind of mechanical damage-or who knows what-caused that minor die-back at the base. These are somewhat established and if you replace, you'll simply be starting over. No need.

I may be wrong but I can't see any shrubs in the pictures which look like Taxus or any other conifer. It's hard to be certain from that distance, though. Can you show close ups? Possibly Buxus????

I agree with floral--as best as you can see, they don't look like conifers.

In blow-up mode, they do look to be yews to me, but it is blurry still. I think though that given size/shape of plants, they are indeed Japanese yews. The three right under the window. Everything about them says Taxus cuspidata to me, but I will agree, the photo stops just short of confirming this, in terms of resolution.

They are a conifer. Here's a closeup

No picture.

I don't doubt you, ckink. As I said, the photo in blow-up mode ends up just a bit too blurred to be 100% certain, but that said, I'm 99% certain they are yews. I don't know why they don't look like that to these other folks. I've seen hundreds of plants that look just like yours, no lie. And no controversy either, as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the blowup picture. What I ended up doing was digging these two up and turning the bad sides to face the house! lol. I trimmed off the dead limbs and will give them some fertilizer and extra water. Hopefully they'll fill in.

OK - I was wrong. The way the light hits those new green tips in that top photo I was convinced I could see oval leaves.

Hmm. I would like to hear an expert's opinion on the idea of changing the orientation. Or of the necessity to preserve a shrub's orientation when transplanting it.

There is no need to preserve the orientation when transplanting. But by turning the bad side to the house, although it hides the bare branches now, in the long run that will slow down regeneration because there is less light at the back. Yew will come back from very aggressive pruning, so unless the wood is actually dead it will resprout when cut back.

Thanks for the orientation explanation. Makes me regret slavishly following someone's rule about preserving it when I transplanted a shaggy yellow chamaecyparis from one side of a slope to the opposite. The ground sweeping branches are now jammed into the hill with its bare ass to the wind. Too heavy to rotate now..

Yeah, I would have just pruned off the dead stuff. Now it's all disturbed again, must regrow its roots, etc. Sheesh...this is a simple issue made unnecessarily complex! Plants grow-they recover....so long as adequate conditions exist.