How can I make the edges of the foliage brush "softer" so it doesn't do this?

Someone else might have a more complete solution to this but a workaround I’ve found for this is:

  1. Clicking only once and dragging instead of placing multiple circles, then you won’t get any overlap
    OR
  2. Using a massive 20,000 brush size and clicking once to cover the entire area, then going in with lasso tool to select and delete any foliage you don’t want

You can set a positive radius on the foliage’s painting settings too which may help keep them distanced so they wont be denser on overlapped spots