I'm a very reluctant gardener, loving being in them but not too used
to actually working on one. But now I have no job...

The house I moved into three years ago (near Stansted Airport in
Essex) has a small flowerbed in the front which contains a pair of
conifers. I don't know what they are, but they're not prolific growers
and are about 3-4 feet high. They are now very stressed and some 30-50
percent of them is dead.

I'm sure the drought is part of it, but I suspect there may be some
other pathology going on. The needles that aren't dead are white. Also
there are white fungal bodies underground in the bed itself. Finally
there's an old stump with black fungi thereupon, but I doubt if that's
related.

My wife wants me to uproot the conifers, and I think she may be right.
But I don't want whatever replaces them to suffer the same fate. Any
sage wisdom?