Turf & Trees

This weekend marked a great milestone in building out the Silver Mountain. I got new brown, tan, and grey paint from Home Depot, and was able to more or less finish the landscaping on the mountain. I re-painted the ground brown and filled in the white spots between rock faces with a few shades of gray. Then I proceeded to sprinkle a coating of various shades of turf and fixed that in place with Scenic Cement using a spray bottle. The result was a much more natural-looking effect than before.

I drilled holes for the trees using a manual Fiskars crafts drill and my older son was all too happy to plug in the trees into the holes. I used a dab of Gorilla glue to make sure they stayed in place. I used small Busch trees on the top of the mountain and larger Woodland Scenics pines closer to tracks to create a sense of perspective. It worked great, and I loved the quality on both. I had a third bag of cheaper trees that just looked so awful I ended up putting in just a few of them, mixed with the beautiful Busch trees. I added more lichen around the rock faces to simulate undergrowth and bushes.

Finally, I started working on the ground. I used tan paint, not the yellowish one I originally got, and sprinkled three shares of turf on top. I got a lot on the tracks, but a layer of ballast should cover those so I did not worry a lot about it at this stage.