I need a “bunch” of trees… and I’d like to get the most realistic I can find… but with the economy… nuff said…
I could make my own … but the thought of making a hundred trees… well… I think I’d rather buy in bulk. I’d like to find some that look as real as possible… not plastic molds with green moss glued to the top… you guys know what I mean…
Any of you know anybody that sells nice looking trees in bulk…
It’s a Ho Scale layout
Thanks
I just spent some time this fine afternoon harvesting a small forest from my garden. Specifically, I have a Lacecap Hydrangea whose blooms, once they die, make for great tree armatures. I just prune them to shape, spray some glue on them, then sprinkle with ground foam. The blooms become a dark brown woody set of branches, but I have to wait all season long for them to finally go wooden in the fall… so today was my first trimming, I’ll get the other blooms once they lose their green.
The shape of these trees isn’t all that convincing for foreground trees, but I intend to use them to forest vast hillsides. Together they look awesome, and all I need to do is throw in a few “detail trees” at the front to complete the scene.
What’s great, of course, is that these are all free! I also trimmed a few stalks from my mums, which though they lack fine branch detail, they have mjor trunks to which lichen can be added to make a fuller tree. Then, with spray glue, I’ll sprinkle fine ground foam onto the lichen. This can be effective, and there’s plenty of twig sources that can produce decent tree trunks.
For my foreground “detail trees”, I use florist materials - you can find several varieties of fine branching structures dyed in various tones, and it’s only a few bucks for a big bunch. I cut them down to tree size, and then I take three such partial trees at a time and glue them together to make a thicker trunk; I use a bare wire (the guts from a twisty-tie) to wrap around the three trunks and hold them together while glue dries. Using three per tree allows me to get a fuller tree body with branches where they need to be; the florist material tends to have noticeable gaps or be flat or one-sided.
Keep an eye out, and I bet you’ll find lots of natural weeds or plants that can be used, most for free (aside from the cost of spray glue and ground foam).
Making several hundred realistic looking deciduous trees is really not that difficult. I have just completed making about 300 trees from stained double ended toothpicks, green sprayed furnace filters cut into rough circles, and either ground up florist foam, or WS varied green, or Fall colored foam sprinkled onto the adhesive sprayed furnace filters that have been pushed onto the stained toothpick trunks. One can use multi-branched sedum trunks for foreground trees, and pieces of super trees for dead trees, or early spring trees. Commercial trees are just too expensive, when hundreds of trees are desired. By drilling holes in the stained terraine, the trees can be replaced with the change of seasons. Bob Hahn [URL=http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w78/ROBTAHahn/?action=view¤t=Falltr ees008.jpg]
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Go to Scenery Express and browse the trees, they have several “bulk” tree deals.For truly cheap good looking trees you have to make them yourself. You didn’t mention what kind of trees you need, but search the forum for trees and you will find multiple posts about methods and instruction. For furnace filter pines trees, go here.
The only way to go.
Your timing is wonderful, as it is “harvest time” for trees. I need to wait a couple more weeks down here in warm coastal Carolina, but for much of the country, it is just about the right time to harvest goldenrod tops. I usually cut a couple big garbage bags full at a time. Back in Virginia, I would usually go to areas somewhere near the RR tracks so that I could also watch for trains at the same time. There are multiple articles with more detailed instructions about on how to utilize these, but the steps I use would be:
Trim the weedtop into a more tree-like shape with a scissors. Sometimes there are some curled-up ends that need to be trimmed off just to shape it a bit.
Insert the “trunks” into holes punched in an old cardboard box and spraypaint green - just cheap Krylon Forest Green works great. The holes for the trees should be far enough apart to allow the spray paint to reach in to the lower branches of each tree. This kills any spiders and such in there and holds things firm.
Spray the trees with a light coat of spray adhesive and then shake Woodland Scenics ground foam over them. This “deepens” the leaf effect. I use “green blend”, but other colors may be used, especially for autumn colors. I spread newspaper under this application area to recycle any ground foam that doesn’t stick.
Mount into holes in scenerywith white glue, starting at the top of the hill and working down. These can be pushed in close together and a forest effect is created relatively quickly.
On my old layout, trees made with this method lasted 20 years without any serious degredation. One can make a “flat” - the 15 or so trees that fit on one cardboard box side - in short time and the cost is very low. I have located several new “tree farms” in my area and will
You don’t need hundreds of realistic looking trees. You only need realistic looking foreground trees. Beyond that you only need something that will suggest a forest canopy and there are a number of techniques for doing that fairly cheaply. My own preference is polyfiber wads, painted dark green, and coated with ground foam to create foliage. The viewer isn’t going to see individual trees. When you look at distant woods in real life, do you see individual trees? Probably not. It’s a case of not seeing the trees for the forest. The same is true in model railroading. Polyfiber trees are not going to fool anybody at the front of the layout but in the background, they blend together to make a convincing scene. Here’s a large hillside I did last year:
The foreground trees are a combination of Super Trees and Woodland Scenic Armatures with lichen canopies. I painted the Super Tree trunks a dark brown. Both types of trees were sprayed with glue and rolled in ground foam to give them foliage. You only need a couple rows of these types of trees. Beyond that, you can’t see the trunks anyway.
Beachbill, You mean like these?
These are glodenrod. If you use the search feature here and type in " Fast cheap and easy trees" you’ll find my tutoriol on how I do them. How do they look on the layout?!? Not too bad.
Terry
I think the key point is that you probably DON’T need hundreds of realistic-looking trees. As others have pointed out, only foreground trees and the ones in the front couple of rows of forest need to be realistic. The rest can be made with cotton balls, poly-fiber, furnace filters, scouring pads, or any other fibrous material, painted varying shades of green and dusted with ground foam.
Terry (Saronaterry),
Yup! That’s it. Your second photo shows how well these can be grouped together to form a viewbreak or how they can be fit close together against a backdrop to develop depth and hide the “corner” or layout edge. Having an assortment of different sizes of trees available at installation time helps, and one can also just break off a “limb” or two and glue it down along the ground to cover places where the backdrop is showing through. From a distance, it is all shubbery under there and adds to the illusion of a forest. (I need to get some photos loaded up, as the scenery is in place in the corner behind the coal mine using only these cheap, homemade, goldenrod trees.)
As the Knights once said: “Shubbery!”
Bill
Thank you for all the suggestions! I have much to think about…what direction to go that is… This will be my last layout… I just want it to go well and look great… I hope that one day I’ll at least have a track side photo in MR… I model for myself…but that would be the cherry on top of the sundae.
Thanks guys for all your help!