Landscaping and terraforming?

[deleted]

Hi!

I am absolutely terrible at landscaping and terraforming. I hate the way my island looks. Only the very front looks good and it just gets worse the farther away you get from there.

I have too many flowers and no way to get rid of them. I’m debating whether or not I should demolish all my natural inclines and replace them with brick ones to match my bridges and fences at the front. Honestly, I need inspiration.

What have you done with various regions of your island? Do you have a theme? I don’t. How have you utilized flowers? I’d like to see what other people are doing.

 

[Fendi]

I find that it really helps to seek out inspiration, so I would definitely recommend checking out YouTube videos or even Pinterest to get an idea as to how others have completed their island. I got some of my ideas from these platforms, and it's a nice way to get a start.

In terms of my island though, I kind of decided to separate it into three different areas, depending on where the rivers cut in to my island. I have the front area, which is a urban area that has all the shops, then I have a bridge leading to the back which is more of a rural area since it's designated as a neighbourhood. The last area is more of leisure area that has the beach, a park, and an orchard.

I decided to use stone bridges and stone inclines throughout my island since I wanted it to be consistent, but I think it would be good to add in some variety. I'm personally not the biggest fan of the natural "slant" incline, unless you're going for a natural looking theme.

My island doesn't really have a theme - but I have a California-esque vibe to my town, with the sprawling boardwalks and wide pathways. But to answer your question regarding flowers, I pretty much just scattered them around my neighbourhood area, and I lined my rivers with flowers. It also helps to keep them colour coordinated, since it looks more uniform. I also created a pond area that is surrounded by flowers. I find that using flowers sparingly makes them pop out more.

 

[GEEBRASS]

Don't have time to respond in detail right now, but Twitch is a great resource to get ideas and see what people are doing! You can hop from stream to stream to stream, and oftentimes you can find someone that is doing island tours of people in their chat, so you get to see a lot of different styles and ideas. It's also interesting to hear someone talking through their thought process while they are executing it in the game.

 

[Dunquixote]

Hi! I’m terrible at terraforming too and kinda have too many flowers; right now my flowers are mostly on the same part of the island and not organized at all aside by flower type. I’m slowly getting to them and am putting a fence around some of them. I haven’t gotten all the hybrids I want yet so I might have to move them out since my one fenced flower group is pretty much out of space now to allow more to grow.

The theme of my island is Dragon Age — it is called Skyhold after a location in DAI, but I based one area I decorated after the marketplace in Denerim in DAO.

I’m using wooden bridges for the non-cliff areas part of the map and stone bridges for the cliff areas; for inclines, I’m using the natural one.
It took me awhile to get any of these ideas. Once I visited a friend’s town, I got a little idea of how I wanted to arrange the houses; more ideas came as I took advantage of moving houses and my mistakes of not lining the houses up right on the first try.

 

[Venn]

Also, check out Tumblr. There's a ton of pictures there. I have brick bridges and inclines and I think it looks great.

 

[June]

i made a peg board of island sections i'd like to try out design wise but i don't have a theme i've decided on yet. for the flowers i had that problem (still do) i put my hybrids on the beach, just dumped/sold the non-hybrids i dug up so it's easier to terraform/landscape. i also take fruit with me whenever i terraform and remove all the trees (by digging up the whole thing) in the section i'm currently working on! i'm also half tempted to just move all the villager houses first in one straight line somewhere while i work on the back of my island (the entrance is rly ugly cause i'm working from the back to the front lol)

it can definitely get a bit overwhelming to decorate esp when you're at a loss for what to do!! your island suddenly feels so big ; - ; so i try to just work on one section at a time and be patient

 

[Uffe]

There really is no right or wrong way of terra-forming and landscaping your islands. You can watch videos like this one here, you can use Happy Island Designer, which is a very early terra-forming/landscaping program that was created before the release of New Horizons. You can save your progress, you can upload the map of your actual island and draw around it without actually messing it up. It's a good program, and I think with some minor tweaks it could be better. Another program that I'm not sure is really well known is the Island Planner. I'm assuming that if you buy the program you'll be able to save your work. That's really my biggest issue with using that at the moment. You can still print screen your work, though. Unfortunately, if you went back to it, then you'd have to start all over. I'm sorry if you already know about these programs and they weren't helpful for you.

When it comes to flowers, all I've got to say is keep the rare ones that were produced and just get rid of the other ones. This is probably something you don't want to hear or read, but this is what I did because I was just constantly looking at the things I worked on and didn't want to start over. Not as in start your game completely over, but I did remove the majority of flowers, pushed furniture off to the side in locations that are not obscuring my path. If you want brick inclines, knock out the natural ones. I feel like you'd have to knock out the inclines or bridges to match whatever look you're going for.

Try to figure out a theme. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if you take one theme and combine it with another. People have done cottagecore and combined it with zen, or fairy tale stuff, it really doesn't matter what you choose. I'd worry about planting flowers last.

 

[deleted]

I took a big step today and got rid of a bunch of unused non-hybrid flowers that were taking over. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the hybrids yet. I know for sure that I want to completely overhaul my residential area. I still have no idea what theme I want.

 

[Karmahri]

Oof I'm right there with you! My island is overrun with pansies that have gotten out of control since I started the game and neglected to tend to them and right now I'm starting the painstaking process of pulling them all out in order to terraform some cliffs >_<
I started with my entrance and made it an extension of the dodo airport with a gift shop, tsa checkpoint/other airport related stuff and I'm working my way towards the back of island slowly!
Also, like other have mentioned, there a lot of 5 star island tour videos on youtube that may help with terraforming ideas and decorations!

 

[deleted]

Oof I'm right there with you! My island is overrun with pansies that have gotten out of control since I started the game and neglected to tend to them and right now I'm starting the painstaking process of pulling them all out in order to terraform some cliffs >_<
I started with my entrance and made it an extension of the dodo airport with a gift shop, tsa checkpoint/other airport related stuff and I'm working my way towards the back of island slowly!
Also, like other have mentioned, there a lot of 5 star island tour videos on youtube that may help with terraforming ideas and decorations!

I’ve seen a few videos, but I don’t like to copy people. I’m trying to come up with my own ideas and it’s not really working lol

 

[seularin]

terraforming just burns me out and i can’t get any ideas while in that mood, so it’s always good to log off and seek inspo

i watch twitch streams and browse tumblr / twt / pinterest for ideas ; i feel like streams motivate me more as i watch people in the process of terraforming

planning out your layout before doing anything major is a step. as people said happy island designer is pretty helpful

when i started terraforming i started too big and immediately moved every building, every house, undid rivers, wasted hours of terraforming cliffs; and i ended up all undoing my work. so ig its best to start small and work your way up instead of having to feel like you have to work on a big project on a deadline

 

[deleted]

terraforming just burns me out and i can’t get any ideas while in that mood, so it’s always good to log off and seek inspo

i watch twitch streams and browse tumblr / twt / pinterest for ideas ; i feel like streams motivate me more as i watch people in the process of terraforming

planning out your layout before doing anything major is a step. as people said happy island designer is pretty helpful

when i started terraforming i started too big and immediately moved every building, every house, undid rivers, wasted hours of terraforming cliffs; and i ended up all undoing my work. so ig its best to start small and work your way up instead of having to feel like you have to work on a big project on a deadline

I’ve tried my best to break up my island into little sections for that reason. I recently got a pretty good idea for my residential area but I have no idea how to execute it. The struggle continues...

 

[Sharksheep]

I think it helps to remember that nothing is permanent. I have moved buildings multiple times and build and demolish so many inclines and bridges. I flipflop between two options before scraping them completely. My advice if that if you don't enjoy the terraforming and the designing part of it is to just find a picture of something you do like and try to replicate it. Maybe you'll figure out why you like it and take elements of it and make it your own.

 

[Bluebellie]

I separated my island into squares and build from there. At the start it was super stressful Because I didn’t even know where to start. Now that I’ve got a couple of those squares done, it’s all coming together and the map is looking nice. I’m not done just yet, but I have the finishing picture imagine.

 

[Peach_Jam]

I was overwhelmed at first and didn't know where to begin! I decided to have somewhat of a plan at the beginning, which was to work on building a cliff for my residential area. After that, inspiration came to me little by little and it became easier to terraform. My island is still nowhere near complete, but I prefer to take it slow and think through my ideas. I would spend more time thinking about where you want your bridges/inclines to go, as those are a pain to demolish/rebuild. As for getting rid of flowers, it might help to sell everything to nooks except the hybrids. Good luck!

 

[deleted]

I still need inspiration... I’m going for an natural, Eden type theme.

 

[eseamir]

as someone mentioned above, happy island designer was a lifesaver for me. I got to work around what I already had so I didn't need to start from scratch but I could visualize some of the general placements I wanted for things (orchard, bamboo forest, campsite, etc) my island only vaguely looks like my original plan now since I've decided to move things around a bit once I started actually playing with it but that initial plan really helped when I was trying to terraform originally

 

[meggiewes]

I don't have a theme. Looking at my island now, it really looks like I organized it around villagers and my museum. I scrapped all my flowers to restart at the beginning (back when I had almost half of all the hybrid colors!).

What helped me was to ignore any planning thing and just arrange, arrange, and rearrange how I liked things. Also dreaming of different islands helped me a lot because I was able to go to various islands and walk around in them. So I can see how I like moving around and how they decorated their space. For instance, I noticed a lot of people plant their trees in a tree-space-tree pattern, but the leaves touch and I don't like the look of that. So when I have rows of trees I line them up with tree-space-space-tree. That way the leaves don't touch. There are a lot of tiny details that you don't realize looking at pictures, but do when you are in the space and playing.

Also, don't be afraid to change your mind. I have a forest area right now that I was planning to make into (yet another) garden space because I found a gorgeous one I wanted to copy. I ended up scrapping that idea because I like the idea of a little forest on my island. It makes it feel like a more natural space. I'm also planning on getting rid of all of my paths for the winter and replacing them with a winter variation of "the path" (only in some spots) while keeping in mind that when spring comes around that I'll be getting rid of "the path" and replacing it with the paths I have now. Keeping in mind that my island is in a constant state of change has taken the pressure off and has made the game more fun for me.