Question
I live in boulder city NV and I have what appears to be frozen or damaged pink chitalpas. I did cut them back in the middle of the season and I may have gotten to cut happy or I cut them to close to really low tempatures.We planted them last spring and had almost 3 feet of growth. They have have now lost all of there leaves and resemble a tree we replaced these trees with that froze.There is a layer of green when I scratch the bark.Will they come back and is there some signes that I can check to see if they are still alive? Is there something I should do to help them?

Answer
Since I live in the deep south, I am not familiar with the plant you speak of. A google search shows the Chitalpas to be a small to medium sized tree which will grow to 15-30 feet tall. It probably did not like being cut back, especially if you cut more than one-third of its original height off.  As a general rule of thumb, if there is green tissue underneath the bark, that is an indication that the plant is alive. I would mulch the soil around the base of the tree with about one inch of any hardwood mulch to protect the roots from cold weather.  The tree should leaf out in the spring.  Keep checking the bark for green tissue.  Any part that does not have green tissue under the bark and the does not leaf out in the spring should be cut off.  Good luck.