The board meets on a Thursday and reads submissions on a phone. You want to replace a hedge or add a bed. Your assistant wrote a tour of the garden. A tour is a site walk. A submission is one change they can vote on.
An HOA contact is a busy stranger with a process. They owe you a recorded answer, not a relationship. Write so the answer fits in the minutes.
One change, as a cold reader would file it
Write for a cold reader. Property address, who you are relative to the owner, the one change, the date you would start, the date you would finish. Then the guideline or rule you believe you are under, in a clause they can check. If you do not know the clause, say you do not, and ask them to name the one that applies.
Ask for a decision: approve as described, deny, or approve with a condition they list. A "please advise" is how a request sits until the next quarter.
Do not attach the plan. RelayLink does not carry attachments. Describe the plants or materials by the names they already use, where they go, and a height or coverage you would measure. Drawings go on the portal or address they already publish for files.
Do not make them reconstruct the lot
Correcting is cheaper than constructing. Arrive with a position: this is a like-for-like replacement, or this is a new bed in the strip they already planted. Then the assumption they can kill — that the irrigation can move, that the neighbour's view is unchanged, that the species is on their list.
If your assistant inferred "native" from a catalogue line, mark it inferred. Boards do not correct a lyrical paragraph. They correct a line, or they defer the packet.
Use the board's words for the lot, not a nickname you keep in your contact list. That nickname does not travel.
You release it; they reply from the address they published
You approve the send. They do not need an account. Most association addresses will never activate RelayLink, and the briefing travels as email. If that mailbox already has an activated account, you need an accepted pair for a new thread. They can reply from the mail. That reply is what you show the owner.
If the owner must see it too, say so, and send them the same description. One briefing still goes to one mailbox.
After they answer
Write back the decision and any condition in their words, and ask them to correct that sentence. Then do that work. Do not add a second change "while we are there" without a second ask. The second change is how a yes becomes a violation letter.
The garden can still be yours to tend. The board's yes is only as wide as the change you described.