Hi!
It's too much work to try and do everything in the one go. I made my island by focusing on one section at a time. It bothered me when 90% of the island was a mess but taking it chunk by chunk it got it done - and when you work on it methodically in this way it's also quite rewarding. It makes you feel proud of the bits you've done, and you see the messy bits as "now I can see where things are going" instead of "oh what a mess, what am I gonna do?!"
Here's a little clip of my island, most of the island looks similar to this:
One thing to bare in mind is keeping the walkways nice and wide and prioritise easy access over beauty. There's no point having a beautiful area if it's impossible to get around it; you'll end up pulling your fences out of frustration! If you're fencing or planting shrubs around pathways, try to keep at least 2 tiles in between the fences/shrubs, otherwise you'll get stuck the moment a villager decides to sit down and read their comic book in the middle of the path
Personally I hate it when items/villagers end up hidden behind buildings, so I have ponds or rivers directly behind every building so no one and nothing can hide behind it.
I got a five star rating almost right away even when my island was a total mess, by doing the following things:
- Pulling up any random spare flowers that I didn't know what to do with and planting them in any random spot. (It might help to spread them out a bit so that every acre has some flowers in)
- Placing furniture outside.
- Talking to Isabel in between chopping/planting trees until she was satisfied with the number of trees.
The rating system doesn't seem to care what furniture you place and where you place it. So if you have collections of furniture you're not sure what to do with yet, just place them somewhere random outside while you think things over, and it will help boost your rating.
Avoid dropping items of course. I've seen some beautiful turnip farms people have made, but they lower your rating.
