Thinking More About Description

Involve every sense that you can. You can cheat a little on this - something like suing "lemon yellow" to describe something manages to evoke taste without directly making the reder feel the taste.

Less is more - pick the perfect detail that shows something, the curl of a vine's tip, or the way its leaves flare out in trumpet shapes. Provide the single precise word rather than a bland adjective backed up with a lot of qualifiers.

Ask yourself what sort of mood you want your reader to get from the description - sad? parched? scared? lusty? Back it up with word choice.

Take the time to run things through a spell checker or have them proofed by someone you trust. Nothing gets in the way of a good description as much as an irritating typo - it stands out and becomes the other thing your reader can focus on.