I agree with you about all of the open space, it's been bothering me too... but I don't really know what to do about it. This needs to be the tallest map in the game, as it stretches almost all the way across the island it's on; there are only two other vertical routes in the area, and they're basically stacked on top of each other. After visiting the academy you leave to the south, and the only other time you'll need to use this route is to go between the two paths to the north. Still, that IS a lot of screens full of nothing of interest, especially in the south.
Since I'm using the FR/LG tileset, I want to emulate their style as much as possible. As you can see
here, my paths and tree structure are modeled after those used in the game, though I compromised and went with less squareness in the trees. What do you mean by "tree shading"? If you mean using smaller trees to kind of... anti-alias, well, I won't be doing that. It's ugly, and whoever came up with it should feel ashamed. While I agree that the cement path would look great (why didn't I think of that?), it needs to be a single continuous path from the academy to the town in the south, and even around the big cities in FR/LG it's always a dirt path leading into the little buildings that separate areas.
edit: I just realized, I took out the building on the path to the south... never mind that last point!
I probably will add rocks to the lake, I wasn't really focusing on that area. The pond isn't actually a pond, it was carved out of the ground. It's a staircase leading to an underground room, which has filled with rainwater; you need the HM Drain to access it.
How are the ledges hindering the map? Sure, that area takes up a lot of space, but I don't see how the ledges themselves are a problem. As for the vegetation... Yeah, okay, trees and flowers are good. I tried putting more blank spots in the grass in
a previous map, but didn't like how it looked.