Ornamental Cherry Tree dropping leaves

[Marb67]

Well, every single year my ornamental cherry tree sprouts healthy leaves in early Spring only to go horrible, scabby and mottled before dropping about now. I seem to harbour every pest and disease in my small walled garden but this is a huge pain as the tree was here before we moved in 23 years ago and it has got to a nice size but I think it will have to be replaced for next season as I can't bear to see it go downhill for yet another year.

The tree was planted at ground level but since then I have built raised beds around the trunk about 2.5 ft up. This shouldn't cause any problems so why does it spring up healthy and then go downhill around this time ? If it was diseased surely the leaves would come up in Spring looking scabby, or not at all.

[Marb67]

Sound of tumbleweed.........

[Nicos]

Sorry marb - thanks for bumping this thread.
I can’t answer your problem and I may well be wrong, but my gut feeling would be that most trees would surely have problems if their roots are almost a metre below the soil level? What does the bark look like if you pull some of the soil away ?
That does look like a fungal problem on the leaf.

[Marb67]

The bark is pretty scabby too.

[Nicos]

I think it’s because you have buried the roots too deep Marb, Look at this…..
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_l...te%20and%20die.

[Marb67]

I think it’s because you have buried the roots too deep Marb, Look at this…..
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_l...te%20and%20die.

But if that is the case, it would have died years ago as it does this every year. It wouldn't have the ability to sprout new, healthy leaves in Spring which it still does if it was full of disease.