my hydrangeas need help

Gardeners, l need your sage advice. I think the soil in my front beds is...unsavory. And I don't know why.

Let's take a walk outside and I'll show you.

I used to have nice healthy plants.  We planted all of this our first spring in the house (7 years ago) and  for a long time they grew like champions. (tear)

We always had a problem with that big bush on the far left - it would start to die, we'd transplant the half dead bush to the backyard and replace it with something new. The new bush would be fine and the half dead bush would perk right up and grow like crazy in the back. Very weird.

Then last summer we had a wicked drought and a crazy number of days of 100+ temps. All my bushes started to look a bit sad and I tried my best to keep them watered and happy but they went down hill fast. By the end of the summer there were firewood.

We dug them up, had a moment of silence to honor their years of service and waited for spring to plant something new.

I planted some lovely hydrangeas and for most of the summer they did pretty well. They didn't flourish as I had hoped but they were happy, alive and blooming. All you can ask for with a first year planting.

Then I came home from vacation to see this. Not good people.

They were starting to look a little funny right before we left but I thought they would hang in there. Our dear house sitter did her best to keep them watered but these suckers look worse than Amanda Bynes.  Look at that poor little thing, you can hardly tell it was even a hydrangea plant at one time.

What's weird is that they still have lots of green leaves on them. It's almost like they were burned or something? I have no idea what has happened to them or what to do. Gardening is not my strong suit and I can ill afford to have this yard looking like poo. Some things are going down at Chez Baumgartner and dead plants are not apart of the plan.

Any ideas? Are they salvageable? Anyone?