Looks like the cultivar 'Center Glow'.

Somebody has sheared it into a congested blob instead of letting it produce its much more attractive natural habit.

The natural form is an upright arching fountain of branches. That spot looks to have enough room for it to grow in its natural form.

if they are correct on the cultivar name .. and i would NOT bet a penny against them.. lol ... this is what it should look like ... if you want some ideas on how to restore it.. you might start a new post in the shrub forum ... ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Physocarpus+%27Center+Glow%27&t=ffcm&iax=images&ia=images

Looks like a public setting rather than a home garden - O.P. may not own the shrub.

There are a lot of different shapes in your link Ken, so which one exact;y is " what it should look like"? I is also not quite clear how that "natural habit" reveals itself in the eyes of one of the other posters here?

Embothrium (Pugetopolis)... actually we did inherit this shrub at our new home. We bought the house in February when the grounds were covered with snow. The original owners had moved out the previous summer, so there was no winterization or prepping... and lo and behold, we found 8 gardens when we thought there were 3; and a lot of plants/bushes & trees we had to reach out to identify. My husband tried to do a bit of 'spring' cleaning this fall and we probably should have left this bush as-is. It didn't bloom much this year (probably due to the unnecessary pruning.

I'd take the fact that you thought this was a public garden as a compliment, but really? I've had nothing to do with it, it was all the previous owners work that we're enjoying now. We decided this year to see what the gardens had in store for us before making any decisions on management and changes to the gardens.

So, next step, I guess is to go off and try to find the brush section of the forum to get more insights into helping a couple of the bushes we're enjoying thrive.

You need The Shrub Forum.

I happen to like the natural fountain shape of this plant. Though I once had one on a standard, the top died , but the roots gave me another plant identical in leaf color. My second ninebark shrub grows like a fountain.

see links . It's a different cultivar but the general habit is the same.

https://www.theplantingtree.com/products/summer-wine-ninebark

https://plantaddicts.com/summer-wine-black-ninebark

Thank you Carol for the explanation. Since a fountain shape is the natural form of the 'Center Glow' cultivar and the plant on the pics doesn't show that tendency I would suggest it is rather 'Amber Jubilee'. It looks much more like 'Amber Jubilee' anyhow. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=+'Amber+Jubilee'+&FORM=HDRSC2

The photo of the plant in question doesn’t show the natural fountain shape because it has been pruned, not because of the cultivar. You can see pruning cuts in the closeup.

If you read my post more carefully NHBabs, you would notice that I didn't say the plant doesn't show the fountain shape (what is obvious), what I said is it doesn't show a tendency towards having that kind of shape. As for pruning, yes I could see the plant has been pruned but pruning itself doesn't say anything about the cultivar.

Windberry, I don’t want to be argumentative, but I honestly haven’t seen any cultivar of reasonably mature, unpruned Physocarpus that didn’t have the fountain shape. There may be cultivars that don’t but I am not personally familiar with any.