A question for experienced Nscale modelers…I will need trees for my layout and since it’s going to be a farmland based scenery,I believe I’ll need thousands of them.Simply put,how many trees to a square foot are needed to create a somewhat realistic forest?I don’t have a single one on hand but my feeling is that a hundred trees of different sizes isn’t too much.Knowing this would help me decide how much of the layout will be forest and how many I’ll need to buy.
I’ve found a chineese distributor on Ebay(We Honest) who sells trees that look quite decent and don’t ask an oil well for them.They come in lots of as many as 500 and even if they’re not the very best,they seem OK to fill a forest.I think I’ll try them.
For background trees, have you concidered puff ball trees. Some folks like them, some don’t. Though the ones I have made are in HO, I plan to do some for my N project too, just smaller balls. You can make a hundred or more with a small bag of WS poly fiber and a bottle of matte medium or white glue. Micro-Mark has a large bag of brown fiber, which should work too. (I have some, but haven’t used it yet.) I think there is a segment of Cody’s Office that shows how to do them. You can vary the sizes when you are making the balls. Use different shades of green on different batches, then mix them as you attach them to the layout. These can work quite well, even fairly close to the front. Do a Search our community, (down the right hand column) and you should find quite a few illustrations.
For foreground trees, you can use purchased trees if you like. Then make some from local weeds and flowers for mid distance trees. Many folks have made very nice trees from sedum, golden rod and several other weeds, as well as some dried plant material from a local florest or craft store. Others prefer to purchase Super Trees and make their foreground trees from them.
Those guys actually come through but their colors tend to be garish, try architrees, I use them as background trees but they are good enough for foreground for most folks. Their pines are the best, for others, judge for yourself.
Thanks for the infos on sources to find scale trees.What I’m actually trying to guess is how many I’ll need for my layout.I’ve elected for a countryside set up and I’ll need some forest scenery and I’ve found (on Ebay) a chinese supplier who sells them at a reasonable price.They may not be the greatest but they seem OK for filling some land and likely buy better ones for the closer scenery.
I’ve made my trees using Woodland Scenics tree armatures and foliage and Hob-E-Tac. In your case, I would make the foreground trees this way, then fill in behind them using puffballs. That way, your detailed trees are in the front where you want the detail to show. Since you’re talking about a dense forest, you’ll probably only see the tops of the ones behind them.
The reason no one seems to be answering your question directly is that buying commercial trees, even cheap ones, isn’t the best way to model a forest.
If you must know, however, I’m guessing that you’d need at least 36 trees (one every two inches) to simulate a true old growth hardwood forest. Denser in some spots, not so many in others. Figure about 225 trees for a 2x3 section.
That same area can be quickly covered with puff ball trees in a couple of hours for about $30 worth of materials.
For my forested areas, I use 3-4 rows of homemade trees (using sedum or WS armatures), with puffball trees behind that.
Sorry about that. Forgot you were in N scale. Double the numbers. Of commercial trees. Making puffball forest doesn’t get any more expensive if you make smaller balls.
My layout is in HO scale, but N scale trees in the hundreds are commercially much too expensive. I prefer Scenic Express Super Trees to puffball trees. Below is a farm scene with a furnace filter set of deciduous trees. I have made several hundred of them in seasonal colors. Woodland Scenic foam turf comes in alol shades of yellow, orange, and redish, besides all shades of green Ine can bulk stain double ended toothpicks for trunks of more distant trees. I tip a $25 box of Super trees over and remove the radially placed trunks, with minimum breakage. I soak three trees at a time in Matte Medium. This makes them less brittle. I use Speedball spray adhesive to spray either the Super Tree armatures, or the furnace filter rough circles that are pushed onto the stained double ended toothpick trunks. I prefer to use my fingers to sprinkle on the foam turf. I change the trees of seasonal colors with change of season. For distant canopy, on can use Woodland Scenic Foam Clumps, without a trunk. Bob Hahn For making a dense growth of conifer trees on a narrow ridge you can cut a packaging sponge into thin sheets with a serrated knife. Then, cut a zig-zag pattern and paint it varied green. Glue these patterns by layering them on the narrow ridge. It makes one able to place many tree shapes in an inch
