Noch, Busch, Woodland Scenics etc have sell lots of neat yard and garden items (the manufacturers have offered many scenery items for decades, but it looks like the various lines have expanded greatly across the board in recent years), and while I know that pre-built scenes are available, I’m more interested in what others have ‘custom’ made using those scenery items, in terms of model flower beds, gardens, yards, planters, parks, etc - not farms or fields or woods or creeks or empty lots or such, but scenes at the ‘maintained garden’ level.
(I’m always shamelessly looking for good ideas to steal… [:P] )
Don’t have much, but here is my wife in our layout home watering her plants as she talks to the girls from the Valley Girls Sports Car club. The day lillies were scratch built by a neighbor. I have tulips in front of the buildings in the second pic but they don’t really show. A few tulips show up in the third pic. Being married to a gardener you would think I would do more, but not yet. I have to get the cactus worked out first.
Those lilies look pretty good - custom made you say, not from Busch or Noch?
Also like the idea of modeling the wife on the layout, as opposed to the usual business naming - nice touch.
Here is a vegatable garden which is a background scene on my layout.
Here is a diorama I created for Take a Model Train to work day a few years ago. The forsythia and rose bushes are clumps of lichen dipped in Noch floral colored foam (the roses look a little big in the photo – they look better in person). The plants in the vegetable garden were made using a variety of ground foam, lichen, and clump foliage, representing carrots, spinach or other leafy greans, peppers and tomatoes. It was designed as an early summer scene, so there is no fruit visible on the plants.
If I’d had more time and space, I would have made the garden bigger, but it was a friendly challenge between me and another model railroader in the office: 2’ x 4’ foam base, HO scale, and a month to work (and, because it was one of the wettest Octobers we’ve had, my sculptamold didn’t dry and grew mold!!). It was a great day at work, however, and generated lots of interest in the hobby.
Nor really much of a garden as such, just some marigolds planted at the bed and breakfast and the bandstand. There is a nicely trimmed hedge around the bandstand as well.
Howmus, the hedge you mentioned caught my eye - which brand did you use (or did you make your own)? I can think of a few places I could use hedging like that…
That was a real tough one…[;)] Simply cut out of some scrap building foam (the closed cell stuff used for scenery) cut to fit, painted with some white glue, and then rolled in fine ground foam. Glued into place, and whalla! Instant hedge. Easy evening project.
The “marigolds” are simply strips of the WS flocking they make for trees. The strips were soaked in dilute white glue, sprinkled with yellow and orange WS fine foam and plopped on the layout. The strips of the flocking were also used several other places as in the vineyard on the farm.
73