Stewardia - replace damaged tree? Or be patient...?

[JohnBK]

Hello Knowledgable Gardeners -

At the back of our row house yard we have a row of three Stewardia trees. The trees are three to four years old, and our hope was that they would match, more or less, and grow up to hide some of the city beyond. But the tree on the right in the top picture below was damaged over the last year. The central growth died (as you can see in the bottom picture) and as a result the tree is shorter than the others and doesn't yet have a new central "trunk" growing upwards.
Maybe it will recover and in time grow to fit in with the other two. But if I'm going to replace it instead I feel like I need to act soon. At their current height of about 7 feet it'll be hard enough to bring a replacement in through the house, which is the only way we have access to the back yard. If I wait, and the tree doesn't grow in in a way that's pleasing then the problem of replacing it will be much harder to solve.
In the mean time I pruned off the dead growth...
What to do?

(I'm not sure why the bottom picture is sideways - but you get the idea!)

[JohnBK]

Of course I meant stewartia, not stewardia!

[pinksand]

If it were me, I'd let it grow. It looks healthy enough to recover fully from the damage and there are always going to be environmental differences that impact the growth of the three trees to keep them from being entirely uniform.

They are awfully close together though... these trees get 20-25' wide which means the branches will eventually be growing into each other.

[JohnBK]

Thank you pinksand.
I wonder about the spacing. My wife and I are pretty thoroughly ignorant about the plant world. In this we were guided by a landscape designer. But the trees are set in a 3 foot deep by about 14 foot wide bed that's contained by cinder block on three sides. The fourth (14') side has a patio on top of it comprising a gravel bed and a cap of concrete. Maybe in time the growth of the trees will be constrained by the contained space and they won't interfere with each other as much as you're imagining.