I am at the point to start purchasing trees for my layout. Suggestions on sites that offer quality trees in bulk for decent prices. Thanks in advance!
My wife has been making tree's for our layout from pieces of a few different plants and the woodland scenics clump foilage. We got around 100 trees so far from 2 of the large bags of foilage. All the bought tree's I've seen are expensive and unrealistic looking.
Thre are some decent realistic looking trees out there, but you're really not going to get a good price on them. Your best best might be any shows/swap meets in your area. Personally, for bulk trees, I make them myself, or for pine trees, I get those cheap Christmas village trees that Walmart sells and rework them.
I purchased a lot of 60 trees from ebay for $20 + $10 shipping. It ships from china. I have not received it yet and cannot tell you about the quality but the feedback from other buyers said the quality was good. Here is the link http://stores.ebay.com/xinsai-brakepads88-store
rkcarguy, what plants does your wife find are the best for trees? Picked fresh and then dried or pick in the fall/dried? I'll be doing some major landscaping soon and don't really want to go broke doing it. All tips are welcome.
There's an article on 'Trees by the bucket' in the latest MR. It's for N but don't see why it wouldn't work in HO as well.
I looked at the eBay trees (350), and noted that you have 14 days limit to return them for your money back, and you are to allow 15 to 30 days for shipping. Seems like they have your money up front, either way, and can keep it. Lets hope the little kids making and packing those trees for you are highly skilled workers!
If one wants to have HO scale trees that actually look like trees and not something totally artificial, then one needs to spend a little money and effort to create them. Most hobbyist's efforts I've seen look simply either like heaps of ground foam, or masses of green snowballs - neither very convincing, except at a considerable distance. As far as I am concerned, the realism of the trees on your layout makes or breaks its appearance. In that regard, I have yet to see any commercially available product sold in large quantities that compares to Scenic Express' Super Trees. These are actual plant armatures, with complex fine branch structure, which you flock yourself with appropriate ground foam. Pricing ranges from around $35 (40 trees & flocking) a box to about $100 (300 tree amatures) a box. Below is a photo of a portion of my layout, set at the height of autumn color in the Northeast, which employs Super Trees. NYW&B
rkcarguy, Your wife makes the trees and helped with the water on your layout? Where did you find her? She sounds too perfect, just don't tell me she also likes to ballast track.
We use the dune tansy or dried yarrow when it's dead in the fall winter months. They are a basic weed that grows everywhere. During the summer they are green with little yellow mini-sunflower like heads on them. I haven't found anything better except for we used a heather root which looks very real with bark and everything. As far as balasting track, neither of us enjoy that. Somehow that part of the layout has been getting ignored lately too. Maybe because we have over 20 turnouts to ballast
