Living in the west, sagebrush is quite common and make excellent tree armatures. These trees take about a half hour to make and probably use 50 cents worth of Woodland Scenics clump foam for the foliage.

Very nice!

That Sagebrush does make a good looking tree trunk ! I'm still looking for a "local plant" that would work as well.
I've been using "poly fiber", and ground foam for foliage, I'll have to check out the Woodland Scenics clump foam, it looks pretty good the way you have used it. If for no other reason, it would provide a greater variety of "foliage" if trees made with it are mixed in with trees using the poly fiber.
"Variety is the spice of - scenery."

I also use the polyfibre with ground foam to get a bit different looking trees. I usually use the cheapest hair spray (Spray Net) to glue the finer foam to the polyfiber. Inexpensive and works well. I love the way the natural sagebrish looks like tree bark. The stuff is all over the place out here.

Wow, chet - those look fantastic.

Hard to beat that.... Gunna give that a try.

Very nice!

Nice looking trees, how about a tutorial on how you build these?

Koos

I guess I could post when I start building my next bunch of trees. It won't be for a while as I am in the progress of trying to get the past yard, engine facility and town built. When I get to that stage, I will post.

ezdays Wrote:Hard to beat that.... Gunna give that a try.

There are two very interesting tree species, there in Arizona......the Paloverde, and the Creosote bush. These, I think, would be as difficult if not more so, to model than Willows.
Where there's a will, there's a greedy rel------- :oops: :oops: there's a way.

Sumpter - I'm trying to figure out a good way to model Mesquite and Palo Verde trees. Creosote bush - if it is a rainy season a large clump of olive colored ground foam may work. If a drier season, I've been considering a wire type armature or a coarse furnace filter type material painted gray and sprinkled with olive-colored ground foam.

Do you do anything to prep the wood or do you just take it from nature and build your trees? I've heard of people baking their nature finds in the oven at a low temp to drive out any moisture and to kill off any bacteria, insects or other undesirables.

I don't do any special prep work. I usually cut dried sagebrush to begin with.

Here's my tip for armatures - Pyramidal Hydrangea.  The dead flower heads can be harvested in the late fall or early spring, broken off at the stem by hand and you have a really nice pyramidal tree armature that's great for simulating fir, pine, spruce, etc.  Knock off the top and you have an excellent deciduous tree, plus the top can become a small spruce.  All I do is hit them with spray adhesive and run them into a tub of ground foam/leaf flock in a good variety of color combinations.  Poke a hole in your layout and add a little glue to the stump.  Done.[attachment=38783]

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Wow, that's fantastic. I'm not sure that Pyramidal Hydrangea will grow in our desert area, but I'm going to look into it. Thanks for posting this.