Can you plant new gooseberry bushes where the old ones have died?

[ScrambledSmegs]

Moved into new home. Garden bursting at the seams with fruit bushes/trees and veg plots . Sadly somewhat neglected as the previous owners (elderly) couldn't care for it much in their final years. I'm a novice gardener so just assume I know nothing, ok?

Anyway. One bed has some quite clearly dead (or very nearly dead) gooseberry bushes. They are covered in some kind of lichen. Would it be a really bad idea to dig them out and plant some replacement bushes?

I'm pretty sure the previous owners wouldn't have just stuck the bushes in somewhere that they weren't suited, this garden has been very carefully planted according to some people wot know these things. They get a fair bit of sun whenever there is actually some around.

WDYR?

Have you a picture - gooseberries do look quite sad after the fruiting, and now is the time to prune them, they may just need a really good chop, and a good load of manure/compost/feed

Will take some tomorrow. I'm reasonably sure that they've succumbed to lichen/mould though, they were like this earlier in the year before we bought the house (we viewed several times over late spring/summer). They haven't fruited for at least 2 years according to the daughter of the previous owners, so I think they've been poorly for a while.

Btw I've done a bit of research and it appears that lichen on gooseberry bushes is often the sign of a healthy plant that just hasn't been pruned. They're prone to it.

I would love that to be the case for mine but they've seemed deader than a very dead thing for the summer that I've seen them, which doesn't bode well.

But at least I can put in some new bushes with no worries. They are very small bushes so I think they were just bunged in and ignored. Sad really.

Lichen is also generally a sign of good air quality! Mould, however, is not.

It could be that they're past their sell by date and need pulling up. It sounds a lot like it if they haven't put out a leaf all summer. Or it could be something like mildew or even botrytis which can make plants look very sad indeed - and would fit with a rather overgrown weedy patch. I'm afraid that it's a bit like with human disease - you need to know exactly what's wrong!!