Maybe they think it looks the way it's supposed to now. I've had a cousin look out my kitchen window and announce that my back yard was "overgrown" as well. She's a realtor. Her idea of landscaping is a lawn with a few little specks of shrubbery in front of the house. Nothing more than garnishing. Wouldn't want to risk softening the impact of the "home", of course.

What are you thinking the Bellevue (note spelling) border should look like? I noticed when it was newer some of the trees used were large-growing types, but these particular specimens are not evident in your photos.

I've seen the border three times now, the first time the garden was two years old and still spotty, but full of promise. The second time it was about five years old, and stunning. It was open enough that you could still walk the paths thru it behind the shrubby trees like cornus and elder. The forground perennial clumps were large but distinct units. Now it is an impenetrable mass of shapeless mounds of leaves for the background, the distinct masses of forground perennials are gone, specimen plants hidden, and no real focal points evident. While still impressive, it appears nowhere near it's former glory.

The common problem is plantings with all the subjects pruned to stand apart like tombstones, each one a distinct specimen, not having an appearance of softness and flow. The merging of some of the trees and shrubs in the NPA border might be more noticeable because most are individual specimens, rather than interlocking drifts of several. If each portion of shrub foliage were larger the current scene (see top photo) would appear less busy.

I was out last week for the first time in a couple years.
The place looks glorious, as always, but definitely could
benefit from some 'defining'. Nothing drastic, just a little
breathing space for individual specimens; it's pretty much of a solid mass right now

Touching = finished. Tombstone plantings don't flow. The problem as shown in the top photo here is that some sections of foliage are too small and there are too many in one area to produce a relaxed, pleasing effect. Where a plant is about to be drowned out by another it would really be best to move the one that is losing the struggle, rather than cutting slots between them with pruners.

The golden catalpa and probably even the variegated liriodendron, most of the other large trees and shrubs providing a foliage effect primarily could be cut down periodically and kept in scale that way. This has been done for some time there with the willows planted for their colored stems.

No doubt we are all guilty of overplanting/underestimating ultimate size of what we plant in gardens, especially if we are impatient to wait for a garden to fill in. It takes real restraint to only plant large shrubs and trees to allow for mature sizes. In my own cases, it will always involve removals of some plants and/or relocation over time, or plantings that are sacrificial as they get overgrown by their more vigorous neighbors.

With public gardens that are also labor intensive and rely on volunteer labor to assist with maintenance, it is doubly difficult to keep a perennial garden with mixed plantings of shrubs and bulbs, etc. looking as sharp as the first year or two after installation. The only west coast gardens that I know of that maintain a certain sameness from year to year are either Japanese or Chinese traditional gardens, or something like the new Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which seems to have an outrageously large maintenance budget, and even 15 gallon or 24 inch box plants are routinely yanked out to be replaced by others. One could make the same complaint about the entry garden designed by Roger Raiche of Planet Horticulture for the San Francisco Botanic(old Strybing)Garden, which also has changed quite abit since first installed, and is also intensively(over?)planted. It is tough to design public gardens with limited maintenance staff and budgets and keep them looking really sharp...

I thought it was just the three martinis