I have a blank spot in the cork roadbed that I'm planning to build/place a meadow, full of flowers. Here are two questions on how I should proceed.....
1) What do you do on your layout for flowering plants (lavenders, roses, tulips, marigolds, pansies, and etc.)?
2) I have Woodland Scenics Coarse Turf orange and red shakers on hand. A thought came to my mind, concerning these items.....Is there a way to change their colors to like brown, for example?
I'm open for suggestions!!
Welcome to the forums. Your first few posts will be audited, so your answers will take a little time to show up.
There are sheets or mats of flowers of various colors available, Woodland Scenics and Scenic Express, check Walthers catalog or web site for others. For bushes you could add some of your red or orange to the tops of clump foliage as flowers.
As for changing the color of a pre colored foam, I doubt it would do well. You could experiment if that's your thing.
Good luck,,
Richard
Hi BNSFanatic
For flowers I use HO Busch flower Kits Roses, ox eye daisys, lupines, dahlias, sunflowers and tulips.
Aparently they are avalable in "N" as well
They also do one called summer flowers which sounds like the one you want for a meadow.
And they do a number of vegatables for the vegie patch.
Health Warning
These things are applied insanity for model railroaders they are positively tiny and take absalute ages to assemble and once the flower head hits the floor forget it it's gone.
I have also used flowering grass tufts coloured foam and pre done flower pots.
Even though they are tiny the kits are recognisable as what they are suposed to be, so are eminently usable as foreground plants.
"Garbage bags garbage bags" oops!! sorry insanity relapse just thinking about those flower kits
For plants I don't bother reading the scale lable much, more often it is better to see the plant or tree and determine whats best that way, after all how big is a plant
I would not bother trying to change the colour of comercial scatter products by the time you have the dye had a couple of goes at it, been killed 10 times by the Domestic Authorities for the mess and clutter.
It would have been cheaper safer and quicker to just go and buy the right colour in the first place.
Only the old fashioned sawdust and food colouring job is worth thinking about even then forget it, and go and buy what you need the colouring on the modern scatters is consistent reliable and doesn't run.
regards John
BNSFanatic1) What do you do on your layout for flowering plants (lavenders, roses, tulips, marigolds, pansies, and etc.)?
Hi BNSFanatic,
Welcome to the forums!!
Walthers has a selection of flowers and flowering shrubs. Depending on how large your area is, the cost could add up for the pre-made stuff. There are also 'flower heads' available so you could use green grass tufts for the plant body and glue on different coloured flower heads.
https://www.walthers.com/search/show/120?q=flowers
You might want to look at the European mfrs. websites as well. Reynaulds imports a lot of European items:
https://www.reynaulds.com/search.aspx?term=flowers&submit=
How close is the scene to the viewer? If it is a couple of feet away you can just do a couple of rows of the detailed flowers in the front and fill in the rest with the grass tufts and foam matched to the front row colours.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!