In the Northern Hemisphere, September is the beginning of the fall season in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, lasting until the end of November. Trees in the game begin to change the colors of their leaves, and new items become available to craft.
There are three types of fall DIY recipes: tree’s bounty, mushroom, and maple leaf furniture. 30 new recipes in total are introduced over the course of the fall months, and they are obtained from balloons and messages in bottles.
If you’re thinking about decorating to better reflect the changing of the season, we’ve compiled 10 of the best fall-themed items you can decorate your island with along with suggestions on how you can customize and use them.
Yellow-Leaf Pile
There are three varieties of the leaf pile in New Horizons. If you’ve been playing the game for a while, you might already have the green-leaf pile crafting recipe.
During the fall months, two more leaf pile varieties become available: yellow leaf and red leaf. You only need a few acorns and clumps of weeds to craft these piles, so it’s not too difficult to make lots of them.
The yellow-leaf and red-leaf piles look great scattered under areas with lots of trees, especially when the trees’ leaves begin to change color towards the end of September. It’s a nice, tidy look, and gives the impression that your villagers love jumping in piles of leaves for fun.
Leaf Campfire
The leaf campfire item is similar to the regular leaf piles, but this version of it is actually on fire. It’s a bit more subtle than the actual campfire item, but instead of wood that is on fire, it’s leaves.
It’s the perfect item to put on a beach or within groups of trees to give off a vibe of a cold autumn night in which everyone can gather around the flames to stay warm. Like the regular leaf pile, this item only takes a few basic materials (pine cones, clumps of weeds, and tree branches) to craft.
The absolute greatest part of the leaf campfire is that is can be customized to have three marshmallow sticks surrounding it. It doesn’t get much cuter than that.
Tree’s Bounty Little Tree
It might be a bit too early in the year to put up a Christmas tree, but you can still show some holiday spirit using the item Tree’s Bounty Little Tree. This can be placed both inside and outside, and there’s even a version of it that looks similar but is much bigger in size.
This tree is made up of pine cones, acorns, and other fall items, so it’s a great item for decorating a bit early for the holiday season. It looks quite festive among regular trees, near leaf piles, and next to villager houses and buildings.
It’s also customizable and can be changed to have white pinecones instead of brown if you want to keep it up as a decoration for the wintery months.
Pine Bonsai Tree
The pine bonsai tree is a super popular decorating item in New Horizons and is highly sought after. The bonsai is a Japanese tradition based on the long-term cultivation and shaping of small trees in a container.
It’s a smaller item in the game, so it places nicely on top of a shelf, table, or mantle. This bonsai tree stays green all year round, so it’s a nice way to keep a pop of green on your island even during the fall months.
Tree’s Bounty Arch
If you’ve been playing New Horizons since its release, you may already have the Bunny Day arch from April and the shell arch from the summer months. Now you can decorate with a fall-themed arch called Tree’s bounty arch.
This item will require not only pine cones and acorns to craft but also maple leaves which begin to fall from trees later in the season. You can time travel to get them early if you really want to start decorating with maple leaf items as soon as possible.
The arch looks great as an entrance to your island, to villagers’ houses, or to fenced-off areas, and it can be customized to have a white pine cone and branch coloring if you want it to look a bit brighter.
Maple-leaf Pond Stone
Like many of the other items on this list, the maple-leaf pond stone has a few other variations; particularly, you might already have the cherry-blossom pond stone from the spring crafting collection.
This version of the pond stone looks very similar to its spring equivalent, but it has maple leaves floating in the water instead of cherry blossom leaves, and it has more of a brown color than grey.
The maple-leaf pond stone is a great decorating choice for islands with a zen vibe. It looks very natural since it’s a rock, so if you’re trying to decorate with more subtle items, such as other rocks and pond stones, this one blends into the environment well.
Mush Parasol
If you want your island to have some more magical forest vibes, you’ll definitely want items from the mushroom series, especially the mush parasol. There’s nothing cuter than seeing a villager sitting underneath it while reading a book or watching leaves fall.
If you’re not time traveling to later in the fall, you’ll have to wait until a bit further into the season for flat mushrooms to start appearing around your island before you can craft this item. It takes only 3 flat mushrooms to create the mush parasol.
This item looks especially great with the autumn colors of the trees and grass as they begin to turn from yellow to orange to red. It can be customized as well to match whichever color scheme looks best on your island: grey, white, yellow, or red with spots.
Mush Partition
The mush partition acts as a good separator if you’re looking for something with a more natural look. There are similar items in a bamboo, ice, and shell variety, so this one is perfect for the fall season.
Like the mush parasol, you’ll need to either time travel or wait until mushroom crafting items start popping up later in the season before you can craft this partition.
There are a few ways you can decorate using this item. If your island has more of a natural, foresty look, you can place the mush partition in random spots to give off an overgrown mushroom vibe.
You can also use this partition can help organize spots on your island, such as placing several of them side by side as a fence to separate villager yards or other areas.
It can also be customized to be green, white, yellow, or red with spots.
Mush Log
The mush logs looks incredibly similar to the log stool, which you can sit on, but this one is a bit bigger and has (as the name suggests) mushrooms growing on its sides.
There’s not too much to say about this item, except that it’s an excellent fall-themed alternative to the regular log stool. It gives you or your villagers a cozy place to sit on, perhaps best paired with the leaf campfire mentioned above.
This log can customized as well, which turns the mushrooms white, purple, yellow, or red with spots, so you can choose a color that looks best for your island.
Mush Lamp
While most of the other items from the mushroom series have a natural look, the mush lamp gives off more of a magical vibe. And the best part is that it glows!
This whimsical lamp is a great decorating item for anyone who is trying to create a magical forest on their island. It can be customized to be white, blue, yellow, or red with spots. It only takes a single skinny mushroom and five pieces of clay to craft one, meaning it’s easy to make plenty of them.
It reminds me a lot of the glowing mushrooms in the Pokemon Sword and Shield town of Ballonlea and its nearby Glimwood Forest, if you’re looking for inspiration on how to decorate with these lamps.
Personally, I think they look great right at the entrance of the island to give a warm welcome to visitors. You can also place several of them parallel to each other to create a glowing walkway. Let your imagination run wild with all the ways to decorate with it.
For more on Animal Crossing, here’s a quiz to find out which Cat villager you’re most like and if you’re into the Wolf villagers, we have a quiz for that too.
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