Hi. I recently had to cut down 5 big douglas fir trees on my lot because they had died very suddenly - in just a couple of months they had turned completely brown. The arborist said they were infested by fir beetle. The previous home owners kept a green lawn and watered the yard quite a bit and I think what happened is that the tree roots became dependent on the watering and didn't have a deep enough root system like they would naturally so when I stopped watering them they became dry and easy targets for the beetles.

I've been trying to ween my yard off of extensive watering, so my question is, how do I keep any more trees from dying? So far the remaining fir seem healthy. My neighbors want me to water them, but that seems a little like keeping a drug addict on heroin instead of weening them off! It just seems stupid to water them since my house basically backs up to healthy forest land where the trees naturally do fine. Help! Any ideas?