Are the people who are giving you feedback pointing to the exact same descriptions? Maybe your descriptions are spotty?

Rule of thumb: My personal rule of thumb, I never like more than 1 adjective/adverb for any description.

Better yet is to make each description serve a second purpose. That way it feels beefier (like a more full description) without being a laundry list.

'A windy day' is one thing. 'Another windy day, and this time he remembered to pull his jacket out' is another.

This takes the description and gives it a reaction within the story.

'Brown hair' is one thing. 'Brown hair that matched neither his father's nor mother's' is quite something else.

Hints of a backstory there...

'Gravel road' is one thing. But, 'The gravel crunched under his feet. "dialog"' is another

It's now providing setting and a dialog action tag.

'The dappled, green and yellow light was everywhere.' <- three adjectives, clunky. Compare that to: 'Light, green and yellow, filtered through the leaves.' <- Same info, dappled is now expressed as an action of the light, and provides a stronger verb than 'was', and the adjectives are reduced to 2. I like the second option here, better.

You can play with your descriptions to address a few writing issues. In general, double duty on the wording goes a long way for the reading enjoyment, at least in my opinion.

Edit: I think what you want is "the telling detail." Here's another link.

I think you want the one specific thing that puts the reader where you want them to be.

I could just vaguely describe a forest in a way that sets the desired
mood and leave most to the reader's imagination, or do I need to
describe the colors, textures, desnity, etc. etc.

I would never describe the colors, textures, density - But I might say that I was in a forest straight out of Hansel and Gretel.

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