Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Making 28mm Hedges






I used a base of musketeers to get scale worked out. I wanted these hedges to be proper old English hedgerows, nice a high, full or blackthorn etc. There's going to be no jumping these hedges!
A large gap in the hedge will be a bottleneck for any squadron of Horse.
This is a project I've been planning for a while, with most of the materials being bought around four years ago.  Recently I have been putting some thought to painting up some ECW Dragoons. You can't have Dragoons unless you have some nice big, thick hedges, so I finally got the kick I needed to dig out the bits box and get crafting.
This is rubberised coconut hair off eBay, it was actually labelled as hedge making material, so should be easy to find. The bases are wooden paint stirrers, just the right width and pretty sturdy too.

I saw this idea and practice being used by another Blogger and for a while we chatted about it. However, sad to say that was a long time ago now and I've lost the name of the blog. The paint stirrer idea I thought was genius!


The rubberised coconut hair comes in thick slabs, that can be cut to shape with scissors. I also pulled it around to lose any straight edges.
My ancient old Bonsai tree finally gets used up. By turning it upside down it gives the impression of a coppiced tree. Gnarly!
I tried to vary the density of the bushes and to leave gate ways in a few of the lengths. These will be covered in mud with cart tracks running through them.

I also used old trigs from the woods to create trees. These were easy to do as the coconut hair does all the work. A few plastic trees were also used for a bit of variety.




 A shot of my walk to work the other day, however, it does show a nice hedgerow in the background. I plan to flock each bush a slightly different shade to create a nice hedgerow look.

1 comment:

Phil Curran said...

I'm sure you'll do a sterling job on them. Have you found a method that you like and is easy to do?