Give trees new life

As Peter Marriott demonstrates, it can take less than an hour to give a dead-looking specimen tree a second life.

Peter Marriott gives a dead-looking tree a second life in under an hour.

Whenever I demolish dioramas and layouts, I always save the trees to reuse on the next layout. As I was building this new project, I came across a plastic bag of sad-looking stored trees from previous layouts. On many of the trees the foliage colour had faded, much of the leaf effect had fallen off and the trees looked like the end of autumn rather than being in mid-summer, as they did when they were purchased.

I examined one of my best quality trees, made originally by Anita Décor (www.anitadecor.nl), that I bought 15 years ago, to see if it was worth rejuvenating. The 18cm tall tree looked very tired indeed, but it had a convincing trunk and a good branch structure, which confirmed that it was worth saving and reusing.

The steps I took to renovate the tree were:

◆ Add some additional foliage in some gaps using Woodland Scenics Poly Fibre.

◆ Add two layers of Woodland Scenics Fine Turfs of slightly different colours.

◆ Add additional leaf effect on top of the turfs.

◆ Review and reshape the tree with a small pair of scissors.

The project took less than an hour and cost very little, considering the small amount of material required to treat a single tree. Naturally, if buying the scenic products and adhesives from scratch, the cost will be higher, but you’ll be able to treat a huge number of individual trees!

Once it was finished, I had an impressive specimen tree that would provide an attractive focal point for my new layout.

Some of the foliage has dried out and become thin so I decided to use teased-out pieces of Woodland Scenics Poly Fibre to bolster the existing foliage where it was needed.

The tree trunk is one of the reasons I decided to keep this tree – it is made from real wood and looks the part. I just needed to try to bring some life into the dead-looking foliage.