I like how you do trees and foliage!
And I think it's a very intelligent to do it that way. if a story doesn't emphasize on the world around it so much, it's better to spare some time.
For my story it's exactly that, what you said at the end. the worldbuilding is crucial, therefore the backgrounds have to immerese the reader as much as possible in my world. But that decision came from my desire to draw detail backgrounds. so it's actually the other way around in my case. My desire led me to do a story about worlds. but story and background effort fits nonetheless 