For those who don't want to gather sticks and staws in their own garden or fear evening walks in the city parks, here's a number of links to order prefab-trees.
Remember though : self-made trees are often the nicest !

If anyone has more links or suggestions, please send them as reply. I'll add them to this list. Maybe Jim can make this into a short article if there's more suggestions and links !

Thanks,

Jan




Static grass, leaves and turf
Manufactured trees (plastic, resin, metal,...) as well as real natural material (branches, roots) can be decorated with a range of foliage options. Here's a few links
20th Century Hobbies
Micro-Mark
Woodland Scenics


1/35 scale trees
Canyon Creek Scenics
Woodland Scenics
Bragdonent
Petite Pines Northern
Vegetarama
skybox

1/35 scale tree stumps
Bayardi
VLS



Whole trees for railroad dioramas - 1/72 Scale
Several websites supply trees for railroad modelers. They go well with 1/72 kits, some even work with 1/35.
Micro-Mark
HobbyplaceSharp Study Models

Jan,
Great post. Thanks for that info. I thought the Canyon Creek trees are amazing. Of course for $25 ea. I guess they should be.

Jim

I've come across a new way to make trees, using wire. You take several strands of wire together and start turning and twisting them in specific ways. It's an old trick I learned from ... my wife's grandmother !!! She used to do this with copper wire for decoration, but it's a great trick for making incredible tree skeletons, later to be covered by plaster, resin or other substances that harden. I gave it a try last weekend, and the results are simply AMAZING ! It's easy to make trees that are 30 cm high, looking so much more convincing than those little plastic ready-made trees.
Gimme a few weeks time, and I'll post a complete step-by-step "how to" article with drawings and pics. I'm so surprised I never saw this technique in modeling before !!!

I would like to see that, I getting tired of doing the modelrailroad trees. need some other way of doing them.

Done that... The results can be quite convincing, but I never knew how to simmulate "the green stuff" of the tree. Whatever I tried, just didn't look right. And modeling every single leaf wasn't my cup of tea..

Opposed to the wire model is mother nature. I have started to use her products exclusively and I think you can't get more realism than that...

BTW, I have seen Vegetarama before, but forgot to bookmark their page. I think they use natural stuff as well... Thanks for sharing the links General.

Mario M.

I have tried this before with 2 different methods.
Both envolve getting a suitable tree trunk. Roots of small trees are usually good for this or else a branch that has loads of smaller branches, buds, etc.
Method 1 is stick a lot of dried moss to each branc´h. Then hang it up side down and spray loads of white glue over it. When it dreis after a few days and you turn it the right way up it looks quite good.
Method 2 is to stick some greem sponge in areas where you want thicker leafage onto the branch. Then paint all the sponge areas with white glue and pour dried herbs over it. Repeat until you have a good coverage. Try different herbs for different trees for some effect.
Spray all black first. Then, when dry, spray dark green from the bottom side and lighter shades from the top to simulate light. The paint also helps keep small parts from falling off.
Dry brush some differnt coulours to lightly to ends etc.
Hopefully this helps. I found these methods on the net and just tried both for some fun. Both look good and a mixture of different trees gives a great effect alone. Method 2 is especially good if you want to make trees where the leaves grow in clumps and trunk/branches can be seen between them.