I have 3 river birch in my backyard for privacy and dappled shade. I planted them 4 years ago. They have nearly double in size and the one on the right (looking at the photo) became very bushy. Finally they leafed out after a very hard winter, but after inspecting them I noticed that the branches on the middle tree were dead and snapped off. So I decided to prune back the trees to remove the dead branches and also to give the middle tree some access to light. (It was a heavy handed pruning.) The problem may be that the trees were planted to close to each other. Also, while I watered them well during the summer, perhaps not enough during the autumn and ahead of our "vortex" winter. Here is my question- will the middle tree re-grow any branches? As you can see, the trunk is extremely bare. Thanks in advance.