What kinds of bushes?

The past year has been tough on plants. Strange intermittent heat episodes. This year cold & wet.

Pictures would help us what "dying" looks like.

As long as the plants received adequate water during any hot, dry periods, 'heat' (and I say that with some emphasis, as a couple of days over 100F is not really much to be concerned about) will not "weaken" plants. And if drought combined with 2009's heat had been an issue, it would have shown up long before now.

Also there are very few plant diseases that will uniformly affect a wide range plants....most are quite specific to certain plants. It is far more likely that what you are seeing is a culmnation of a very early, very sharp cold spell last fall followed by a prolonged period of excessive rainfall. A lot of typically hardy plants are showing a lot of stress from the past 6 months weather and many just haven't made it at all.

Without knowing what sort of plants you are referring to and seeing specifically what problems they are experiencing, it is impossible to say with any kind of certainty what might be wrong. Pictures would certainly help but I'd suspect most of what you are seeing is weather-related.

I agree with gardengal. We've had two winters in a row with fast deep freezes, down to 12 degrees F at my place. And two summers in a row with lots of rain and no heat.