Tips on making a forest town

[Mayor Monday]

Hey there! Thanks for stopping by.

I need some tips and tricks. I've always made polished towns with paths and organization, but I really want a change. I know a lot of people have made 'forest towns' already- but I've always wanted to do this and there's no stopping me now.

The main plants I've been working with are evergreens, plain trees, black/white flowers, and holly bushes. I don't plan on using main path patterns- just a few scattered to give a general sense of direction.

So- those of you with better design skills than me- what's your advice for making good forest towns?

 

[Xara]

i’d use lots of trees (mainly cedar ones) and bushes - i’d try to find some good foresty looking paths and designs (searching up acnl forest qr codes should help). i’d also mainly use regular flowers (red, white, yellow) but hybrids would look nice too along with jacob’s ladders and four-leaf clovers.

as for pwps, i think these would look best in a forest town:

campsite
camping cot
fire pit (and you could put treestumps around it to look like a campfire
hammock
log bench
geyser
stonehedge
topiaries
flower arch
wisteria trellis
any of the zen pwps

hope this helps!!

 

[cicely]

I think your town sounds good so far. You could always add mushrooms! I love when towns have a "fairy ring" of mushrooms, it's so cute.
Also, every good forest town I've visited had some kind of ~secret~ little area to find, nestled between the trees. Maybe it could just be a little patch of different colored flowers, or goodies for a visitor.
You could think about how you want to place the trees. I think it'd look good if there was a straight line of trees leading up to a house, and random placement for most of the town.

 

[LadyDestani]

I think the trickiest but most important part to getting a natural foresty feel is making sure that your plants and pathways look random. You don't want your trees, bushes and flowers to have a clearly discernable pattern. The paths should wind and curve naturally. The path can also widen and narrow in different places.

I've never made a real forest town, but those are the things I noticed when visiting other really good forest towns.

 

[Mayor Monday]

I think the trickiest but most important part to getting a natural foresty feel is making sure that your plants and pathways look random. You don't want your trees, bushes and flowers to have a clearly discernable pattern.

I have been able to achieve this. It wasn't too difficult- it was actually really fun to do. The only areas I made more open- for the feeling of having to decide a path and deviate from the 'main route'- were a couple of areas in from of the train station and the town hall.

 

[rezberri]

I think the trickiest but most important part to getting a natural foresty feel is making sure that your plants and pathways look random. You don't want your trees, bushes and flowers to have a clearly discernable pattern.

i wholeheartedly agree with this!! pwps are important but unlike plants, you can't place them literally everywhere in your town. i've found that not making patches of bushes/trees/flowers gives a more organic feel to things. leave some open spaces between everything and try to vary your flowers (i want to clarify that a 1 tile radius around every plant feels weird, and would suggest little clusters of plants and stuff with interspersed open spaces!!). i find that i like to pick one flower color and then use 2-3 flower types that have that color. i also like to pair the main color with white flowers; jacobs ladders, white cosmos, and dandelions being my favorites. if the open spaces bother you, you could always let clovers or weeds spawn in them to fill it up a bit but still keep it organic looking.

i also recommend not having a lot of fruit trees in the same area!! i usually had a small amount of fruit trees and mostly used regular saplings. i also never made the north of my town all cedars; some were fine but too many made it have a weird transition from north to south. i also found that for bushes i usually used sweet olive and usually only placed one or two bushes in an area at a time. if i wanted a colorful bush i used azaleas or hydrangeas and they were usually placed around more "developed" areas of my town, such as near the plaza and villager houses.

i would like to preface that these are just my opinions and everyone does a theme differently!! that's why it's so fun to visit other people's towns and see how they interpreted a theme. good luck with your town!!

 

[Blood Eclipse]

I have a few areas in my town, which are centered around forest themes. My favorite is my apple forest. (I'd take a photo, but a.] I don't feel like booting the game and b.] a certain mice villager destroyed part of it) I planted apple trees around one of my ponds and in between the top section of the trees, I planted holly bushes then I dropped a few mushrooms on the ground (famous mushroom, flat mushroom, skinny mushroom, ect.). I also chopped on of the trees to serve as a chair with a Triforce pattern on it. I like to find villagers sleeping on the tree stump sometimes.

 

[Mayor Monday]

I have a few areas in my town, which are centered around forest themes. My favorite is my apple forest. (I'd take a photo, but a.] I don't feel like booting the game and b.] a certain mice villager destroyed part of it) I planted apple trees around one of my ponds and in between the top section of the trees, I planted holly bushes then I dropped a few mushrooms on the ground (famous mushroom, flat mushroom, skinny mushroom, ect.). I also chopped on of the trees to serve as a chair with a Triforce pattern on it. I like to find villagers sleeping on the tree stump sometimes.

This all sounds lovely! I was lucky to get apples as my main town fruit. I've planted perfect apples everywhere to fill in areas since they've become a staple of the theme.

I've also used some holly bushes, though I hadn't thought of mushrooms. I thought they counted as dropped items and I was trying to achieve a perfect town status.

 

[Blood Eclipse]

This all sounds lovely! I was lucky to get apples as my main town fruit. I've planted perfect apples everywhere to fill in areas since they've become a staple of the theme.

I've also used some holly bushes, though I hadn't thought of mushrooms. I thought they counted as dropped items and I was trying to achieve a perfect town status.

Pretty much anything that spawns in your town naturally isn't trash. Seashells wash ashore, fruit falls from trees, mushrooms spawn next to special stumps or in November, clovers spawn naturally. Weeds are trash, however, and so are lost items (the villagers dropped them there, not nature!).

Thankfully, mushrooms don't count as trash.