You don't need to cut down all threes first. I personally cut them all down, but its not necessary.
pros to cutting down all trees first:
- you get it out of the way so its easier to lay down your paths flowers
- you can harvest mushrooms if you get any special stumps
cons to cutting down all trees first:
- may take longer to reach perfect town depending on how long it takes you to landscape your entire town.
example:
this is my town right now. the pink areas have already been landscaped. the rest of the map has a bunch of disorganized flowers in it but no trees. when I talk to Isabelle she tells me my villagers feel Hell needs more greenery. Meanwhile in my other town I didn't cut down all trees so I was actually able to reach perfect town pretty quickly even though I had landscaped less.
ANYWAY. Tips:
- Use EVERY resource available to you: flowers, bushes, cedars, regular trees, fruit trees, bamboo, clovers, mushrooms.
- Don't be afraid to mix different flower types. A lot of people only put roses with roses, lilies with lilies, cosmos with cosmos, etc. But I feel like combining different flower types adds some great texture to towns and makes them look more natural. My favorite combinations are: White Lilies with Pink Roses, and Pink Cosmos with Purple Roses, but you can experiment as much as you'd like.
- Don't be afraid to mix different colors either, you'd be surprised at how great some colors look together. Hell, you could even do a flower rainbow! (I actually have some in both of my towns and I love them)
- I'm guilty of doing this in Eclair (been planning on fixing it) and I guess it all comes down to personal taste, but... Don't go overboard with the flowers! A 20x20 space filled with flowers can sometimes look a little flat and boring. Why not spice it up with a pwp? Or maybe with some bushes, trees, or something else?
- Stumps are GREAT. Not just tree stumps, but cut bamboo as well. You can even add different textures by cutting down the trees/bamboo at different life stages. And if you have a silver axe you can get some special stumps to grow mushrooms with.
- Plan things out: don't just wait until you've unlocked a particular PWP to figure out where to put it.
Save the spot from the start!
- Speaking of planning: graph paper is your friend, utilize it! Seriously, that stuff is great for making blue prints.
- Save the spots where unwanted villagers live for last. Trust me, don't plan around something that'll only be there temporarily.
- If you don't plot reset: Always make sure that you have extras of a particular fruit or flower in storage or somewhere a villager can't put their house in otherwise you might end up losing your only blue roses or perfect apple trees.