There are a lot of spruce trees in my neighborhood, and the majority of them seem to have a lot more dead branches this year. There are several that are completely dead, and more that are almost all dead. Other types of evergreens in the same yards are doing fine. They were not this bad last year, but could there be something besides the harsh winter that is affecting them all?

Hello:

Yes, spruce (and other needle evergreens) have suffered more this year. This started during the drought of 2012 and has not let up. Lots of needle casts and blights are impacting health right now. It is worse on older and stressed evergreens. Most of the needle diseases require more than one treatment over a period of 2-4 years along with feeding and watering. You can have your plants evaluated by a certified Arborist and compare several years of treatments against removal and planting new trees. An arborist is not able to guarantee treatments will be able to save the tree.