I’m now in full swing scenery mode. I’ve dabbled and experimented some before, and learned a few things, but now the layout track and infrastructure is all done pretty much. So now I’m all in for all types of scenery including trees.
Living in Central Oregon, on the “high desert”, east of the Cascades, there is an availability of a few plants that lend to the cause.
Silver sage has long been a favorite for scale modelers. East of town (Bend) it’s a predominant plant. Finding a dead one with a tight growing pattern takes some looking but yeilds great trees when you find one.
There’s another plant that grows right here in the 'hood, I don’t know what it’s officially called, but I’ve heard it called deer brush, bitter brush, and generically refered to as sage, which it’s not. You have to be picky with this one too, finding tight concentrated growth.
Today I poked around in my neighbor’s way back yard [:-^]and picked a 5 gallon pail of what looked like good specimens. (Oh, don’t worry. He’d have me take it ALL, just a weed around here. He’s paid me to haul trailer loads away already)
I have about 56 trees here in varying sizes. The more brownish ones with loose bark are the dead silver sage. The gray with smooth bark is the other, deer brush. There are also 2 metal WS in here someone gave me sometime back.
The front row, in front of the HO Alco S-1 are pretty much as nature produced them. I just trimmed them to
Those look like some great tree trunks to start from…
Those are perfect looking armatures! Nothing like that grows in WI. Deerbrush, it does look a lot like what I had bought once, and the seller called it sage.
Whatever it’s called, it’s perfect, in my eyes!
You could probably sell that stuff.
Next time I make trees, for foliage, I’m using the fine leaf foliage, from either Scenic Exp. or, I think Noch makes a “leaf” foliage.
Mike.
Your right about that, the best I can find is golden rod, ok but not like what you have. And in my price range.
[unless I missed it] Have you try useing some poly fiber to help fill them out? I got mine from an old pillow.
I have used both Scenic Exp. and Noch leaf Ithink both are good, jut got a bag of W.S. havn’t used it yet
Yep, that’s what I use to represent the fine branch work. After attaching it to the main “tree”, usually with spray glue, I paint it, let it dry, then cover with foliage.
It works good, you can shape the bunches of “branches” the way you want. The paint helps hold it all together.
All the tress in this scene, except pine trees, were done that way.
I still like those deerbrush trees. What an excellent start. Some areas, you wouldn’t need the fiber fill.
Mike.
Those trees would look great just how they are for someone modeling late fall or winter when all of the leaves are gone.
Thanks for the comments, guys. Mike, all of your scenery looks great. I don’t know about the polyfiber stuff, but seeing is believing. I like your lower lying bushes. How do you make them? I need to make believible blackberry bushes, as I am modeling the Oregon coast.
Yes, these would make good winter trees, but my layout is set in an endless late summer, not quite fall. Nice and warm!
On the subject of trees, I made these evergreens probably 17 years ago. Balsa trunk and caspia branches, painted gray, and flocked with WS turf or something. The lower right one is how they look before paint and flocking. I thought they looked pretty good, but apparently they taste good too, as my wifes dog got into a box of 6 or 8 of them right after I made them and ATE them all! (These replacements are safe) Dan
Over the weeks since this post, I’ve played around with the trees off and on. The ones in the front (closer) row were made using sage and deerbrush, with seafoam smaller branches. They look great to me, but take far more time.
The back row, applying you guys use of polyfiber, are sage, and deerbrush with polyfiber. I had to learn to tease the polyfiber out considerably. The first couple attempts look like cottonball trees. This method is SO much faster, and I like the results.
This is how many I have so far. I don’t have a lot of area on the layout that calls for trees, so I’m not going to make a ton more. I’ll make them “on demand” since it’s so qick and easy to do so with the polyfiber. One thing I do on polyfiber trees is spray paint the fibers an olive green before applying adhesive spray to tone down fiber.
Most of the trees use Super Leaf medium green. The darker ones used Pale green, it was a bright, almost neon yellow, so I spray painted them an olive color. much better.
I also used their dark green for a couple. Way too dark, almost blue. Painted them too.
I still have these “blanks” to pull from, plus the box of seafoam from Super Trees for smaller trees when needed.
The RR layout usually goes into low priority mode as the weather gets nice. But I found a few minutes today to make six trees and post them here along with the previous attempts.
So what have I been so busy doing in my 1/1 yard the last few days? Cutti
Nice looking trees! I should try making trees your way, it seems to yield some great results.
Man, I picked up some weeds I thought looked great on my trip out West, but they sure don’t look that good.
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Great looking trees!
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-Kevin
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I agree…great looking trees on great-looking armatures! I wish there was something like that growing in this area.
Wayne
Good morning. Those are some great looking trees Southgate. I don’t think I’ve seen any better. Maybe we should call you The Lorax[(-D]
I really enjoy making trees. Kind of a relaxing pastime. I have made many pine trees so far but I haven’t tried making any Deciduous trees yet. They do not look as good as yours.
Almost every year, Judy and I go down to the Conservatory at Como Park to see the bonsai trees. They have pruning competitions. Those things are really neat, they are small but they look huge.
I only wish I had the resources up here so I could try what you have accomplished. I think I’ll go down to the thicket by the marsh areas to see what grows there. I sure hope bug spray works as tick repellent[:S][(-D]
Keep up the good work.
TF