Temperate forests shape global carbon dynamics, acting as powerful carbon sinks that blunt the pace of climate change. As ongoing agricultural expansion and land development fragment forest ecosystems, sharp forest edges emerge, creating microclimates that differ dramatically from interior conditions. Increased sunlight, warmer temperatures, and reduced competition at edges often accelerate tree growth. However, these same conditions may heighten vulnerability to climate stressors such as drought. Despite the ecological importance of forest edge zones, areas within 30 meters of an edge, their response to climate stress remains poorly understood. To investigate how drought alters tree growth within a fragmented forest, we imposed a 95% throughfall exclusion treatment for 6 weeks during summer 2025 on two 15-by-30 meter edge-to-interior transects alongside an 8100 m² clearing at Harvard Forest. We quantified radial tree growth at weekly timesteps for 111 trees (? 20 cm DBH) using manual band dendrometers. In addition, a 50-tree subset was instrumented with high-resolution automated point dendrometers. Continuous microclimate sensors recorded temperature and soil conditions across each plot. These tree growth measurements were focused on red oak (Quercus rubra), red maple (Acer rubrum), and eastern white pine (Pinus strobus), which are some of the most common tree species in the region. While the growth of trees at the forest edge outpaced the growth of interior forest trees in plots receiving ambient precipitation, drought decelerated edge growth, weakening the usual edge enhancement. Here, we illustrate a potential vulnerability of edge-driven productivity under stress. Whereas past studies emphasized the growth-promoting virtues of edge-influenced temperate forests, our results suggest that such benefits may collapse under drought, challenging the assumption that edge-driven productivity is a reliable contributor to carbon uptake. As climate extremes intensify, forest carbon models must capture how fragmentation interacts with stress to shape ecosystem function. Recognizing forest edges as both sources of carbon productivity and sites of climatic vulnerability is essential to forecasting the fate of fragmented forests in a warming climate.