"Evergreen tree bases - best ground cover??" Topic

I'm starting a project for myself and my boys basing trees on CD's. I was wondering what some people consider a good ground cover source to replicate the forest bed for an evergreen stand.

I'd suggest saw dust: paint on some white glue, then sprinkle on the saw dust, no painting required. If you want smaller granularity, just use tan colored sand, no painting required. Otherwise, look at model railroad supplies in your local hobby store, and pick up some tan colored ballast, apply the same as the saw dust. Cheers!

For some darker mix maybe the contents of cheap tea bags.

Tealeaves work nicely for pine forest, or any forest actually. You can recycle used tealeaves by drying them out in a microwave. For forest flooring, I particularly like the contents of Cinnamon Tea -- nice reddish-brown blends :3

Here's some photos over here: link

Take a look at scenic express. They have a forest floor blend that is available separate or in a six pack with some other really useful ground covers:

link

Also CDs are fairly large bases. You may want miniatures to stand on them so they look right using the tree trunks for cover. So the tree branches and foliage need to be high enough for your typical based miniature with raised weapons to fit underneath, and you may want to model significant portions of the base flat so that miniatures don't fall over.

Remember that evergreens actually will acidify the soil so bare earth and dry needles will be all that you should have under the trees.

Rich is totally right.My dad had planted stands of pine trees originally intended as a Christmas tree farm that didnt pan out,and as a kid I used to play in the older stands.Nothing grows underneath there.

I use dried, used,tea leaves also. They work pretty well for the needles that are found under those trees.

Tom

Thanks all for you suggestions and input!

@Minimo: nice work there. I like it. Might give the tea leaves a try.

@teboj17: Thanks for the link. Bookmarked for future reference. I would like to work on something this weekend, so was hoping to find something around the house I could put my hands on.

@ Rich & Skink: yeah, I realise that groundcover under evergreens is different than for leaf trees. And Pine tends to be different than spruce as (I think) the pine needles tend to blanket more so than spruce needles. I wouldn't say nothing grows. Around here there are low lying green plants (we called 'em snake berries as kids but have no idea what they are really called). Also, near wet areas, there was a type of spongey moss, great for chinking seams in log cabins :)

@ CeruLucifus: thanks for those points, well taken.

LOL, I have many model trees I use for forested areas in 28mm fantasy battle games. They are individually based and really meant as markers, so they are typically placed on a large flat terrain base which represents the actual forest area, and if miniatures move into it, the trees are moved around to accommodate.

My D&D DM asked me to bring terrain to our last game. So I'm putting out my trees and model boulders and bushes and what not, and he starts complaining that the trees are of no use for what he had in mind -- many of my trees are too low for a figure to stand underneath, and the ones that are tall enough, the bases have roots modeled on them so a figure can't actually stand next to the trunk. D-oh! I had never thought about that before.

I had known none of my trees are big enough for figures to be placed up in their branches, which is another issue. Sooner or later I will assemble some that big with little platforms in them.

I was just out today getting an estimate for having some pines removed from my yard. The ground below is very black and you really can't see too many needles. But what I tried on my CDs was some of the old Bachmann brand "Earth" which was just sawdust dyed brown or I cut some sisal in tiny pieces also.
Depending on where they are, isolated or in clusters, they would or wouldn't have branches with needles all the way to the ground. Whatever you decide to use, I'd still suggest a very dark (needle decayed) color like a very dark brown almost black.