My Spruce Dilemma

We used to camp every summer at Hartman Creek State Park near Waupaca, WI.  I would walk for hours in the huge stands of pine planted there years ago.  The floor was covered in needles and almost nothing grew under those trees.  Since they were planted in long neat rows it gave it a weird Alice-In-Wonderland feel to those strangely quiet woods.  I've been charmed by evergreens ever since.

So, when we bought our place, I was thrilled that it had a bunch of tall spruce hiding the house from the street.   There were pendulous Norway Spruce, White Spruce (aka Green Spruce) and Blue Spruce all grouped together along with some deciduous trees and Eastern Red Cedars.

It wasn't long though before I noticed that some of the trees looked pretty sickly and there were a bunch of dead branches where the trees had shaded each other out.  That fall I noticed needles on all the spruces except the Norway turning brown and dropping.  An arborist confirmed rhizosphaera, a chronic fungal needle cast disease that infects the trees in spring but doesn't kill off the needles until fall. 

Turns out my spruce are highly stressed.  They don't like heavy clay soil.  (Oops, that's what we've got.)  They like acidic soil. (Ours is about as alkaline as you can get.)  They don't handle drought well (There's always drought in Wisconsin in the summer.)  And, finally, they were improperly spaced when first planted, so not only are they stressed but will always have crowded roots and barely enough foliage.  My arborist said he doesn't like spruce because they get ugly and diseased as they age.  He recommended I clear cut them and replace them with something else,  like fir or pine.

I was horrified.  It was one of the features of our yard that I really thought was cool.  Trying to think of an alternative, I suggested maybe he could thin them to just a few trees but because they were spaced so close together, there were too many bare spots and they would look even worse.  It wasn't much of an option.  As for taking them all out, I really didn't want to do it.  The trees are a hot spot for birds (like my favs, the chickadees) and squirrels.  I know there are red squirrels nesting in them.  And, I really do like how they shield the house and yard from the street. 

Dead branches were removed from the ground to 10-15' up the trunks.

So, I decided to just have the arborist clear out the dead branches, which turned out to be a miserable job.  All that afternoon I had two young guys up in the trees, yelping in pain as they got poked hard by sharp dead tree branches.  They tried not to take any branches that were still alive, even if there were bare patches above them so the trees still look a bit ratty, but definitely better than before their trim. 

As for the needlecast disease, I put a layer of leaves and bark mulch under the trees last spring.  I plan to put another thick layer of compost and mulch under them this spring, along with some soil acidifier granules.  The trees didn't lose their needles like they did the year before.  I suspect that it was mostly due to our weirdly dry spring weather but maybe spreading that layer of organic matter under the trees helped too. 

So, that's my spruce dilemma.  I really should take them all out and start over fresh but I'm going to put it off for now and let some of the younger spruce and other evergreens in my yard grow up some so they can provide food and shelter to the birds/squirrels.  I may also thin them out a bit, even if the result isn't very pretty.  What do you think I should do?