Once I had installed the majority of the cedar trees on the NES, I noticed that despite best efforts, the tapering branches at the base of the trees had created gaps that allowed me to see right through the bush. A drive to work revealed that real cedars have a great deal of underbrush growth that covers the base of the trees. I wasn’t interested in trying to duplicate the rich variety of plant life found in nature, but simply suggest that there were more than just trees, so I decided to focus on the large bushy dogwoods that typically line the edge of a cedar bush. I could have modelled hundreds of different species of plants, but what I was after was the suggestion, not a prototypical representation of the local fauna and flora.
I quick trip to our local fabric store revealed a huge selection of different fun furs and two varieties that I selected for my n scale Niagara Escarpment System. The first was a form of ‘wolf-fur’, that had a mix of short and long light and dark hairs that closely resembled the grey thickets at the base of our local cedars. The second fur was a honey-coloured, very dense teddy-bear fur that was an almost identical colour match to the dead grass on the model railroad.
Installation was straightforward. First I dampened the area I wanted to plant the shrubs in with a bit of wet water. I clipped off a small clump of fun fur with some scissors, dipped the cut-end into the 50/50 water/white glue, and planted it on the layout. The wet water helped to ‘wick’ up the glue, so that the fur didn’t have a glob of clear glue at its base once everything had dried. Before the glue set, I tapped the centre of the bush with the sharp tip of my awl to help spread the fur fibres out in a slight fan pattern
After letting the shrubs dry overnight, I measured them in the morning to find that they were about 10 feet tall ‘ a prototypical height in many cases, but too tall for my tastes, I pruned the fur with some scissors and spread the clipping around the fixed shrubs. Happy with the results, I gave the entire area a quick blast of Testor’s Dullcote to help fix everything in place, as well as kill the shine of the fun-fur.
