Modelling Quick and Easy Farm Hedges

As part of the Hillside Surgery series, I take a look at how to model farm hedges to adorn the future farm scene on the hillside.
0:00 Introduction
1:33 Real life examples of hedges
2:23 Model hedge process
16:18 Conclusion
17:02 Progress on projects

[@iansngauge]

Hi Julian! What a fantastic tip! Who knew hanging basket liners would be so useful in the world of model railways? All the best, Ian.

[@dylansheppardmymodelrailway]

Nice one Julian great tips there 👍💯👍

[@Mav_at_Pwll-Y-Ddraig]

Hi Julian. Excellent video. The funny thing is, I looked at the title and nearly didn'twatch it. But because it is you I did. Boy am I glad i did. Those rural hedges look amazing! I'd never considere that before and now I realise that this style of hedge is the dominant one around the fields in this country! I will defimitely be incorporating your idea in my own layout when I evntually get to that stage. As for the gaps between videos, I wouldn't worry about it. Your videos are alwasy worth waiting for and are a treat when you put them up :). Take care and thank ypu again

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thank you for your very kind words, it is immensely appreciated.

[@haltonroadmodelrailway]

Another great video, brilliant idea. I'm busy doing all the landscaping on my own layout at the moment and have lots of countryside and farmland areas so I'll definitely give this a go. Thanks.

[@schadowolf]

Great primer of tips/techniques, thanks for sharing!

[@roystudds1944]

Very clever idea Julian. Good to see another video from you. Stay safe out there. Hope you,haven’t been affected by the weather. Roy.

[@daveharland9126]

You are amazingly creative. ✔️

[@omeaga27]

It's a fantastic material I used it to make all the large trees on my white house lawn sections.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

I did wonder if the coconut fibre would be suitable to make trees, I'll have to give it a go.

[@paulbottrill8391]

Great video Julian,

[@michaelwhiles5282]

Good morning from the UK - great work, as always.

[@silkytrack8091]

Awesome work👍

[@marklittlejohn1457]

Hi Julian hope you're well brilliant idea they look great thankyou for the tips and video

[@vincenthuying98]

Dear Julian, like ‘m both, the more airy one definitely has the kind of falling branches of a wild blackberry hedgerow. On the construction of the hedgerows, you also can fix your base on the coconut mat before you do the ‘hairdressing.’ Think that will also help to make a slightly smaller base for the hedge. Or, you could even cut two hedges from one bead of hot glue. Think Matte medium will also do a great job for a base. Overall, great idea, definitely will try out the coconut material. Cheerio

[@michaeltrotman6960]

That was great thank you for sharing that they look really good

[@w.rustylane5650]

After watching a gizillion how to videos I've found that every modeler has his/her own way of accomplishing a certain task whether it be hedges or trees. Personally I use the wife's old scrubbers, the 3M part I cut off and use for hedges and the foam part goes into the electric coffee grinder with whatever color I want and gets ground into ground scatter or use for trees. When I lived in Georgia, we always had Privot hedges growing around any fence as the birds would deposit the seeds in their dung. I have a ton of lichen growing on the hill behind my house to make hedges, enough to last a lifetime. I treat the lichen with water soluble glycerin and a little alcohol to break the surface tension. Looks like you have enough coconut fiber to last you a lifetime. I always try to model on the cheap and try not to buy anything I can find to use around the house or in the yard. I'd rather spend my $$ on engines or rolling stock for my railroad. I even make my own rust powder from 0000 steel wool & vinegar. I've got 2 airbrushes for all my painting, the Chinese one for lacquer based paint and my Badger 155 Anthem for acrylic paints. I paint everything with my airbrush including Coleman lanterns, stoves and even shelves with a lacquer or acrylic finish. I've got a couple of hot glue guns with several packages of glue; guess I need to start using them for modeling. Cheers from eastern TN

[@gregoryhale2202]

Brilliant Cheers Greg

[@onnomulder9775]

Another great 'how to' Julian!!! Thanks for sharing this video! Cheers Onno.

[@alastairwilson457]

Really good technique!

[@markgallan5167]

great idea those would look good along a river or swampy area for dead cattails or marshy plants

[@anfieldroadlayoutintheloft5204]

good tip on the channel keep up the good vids thanks lee

[@johnland7318]

Don't forget the even cheaper hedge made from a green pan scrubbing sheet. Free from the kitchen or few less 'dollars' from Tesco's for a pack of 4. Makes a machine cut hedge in seconds.. Add dots of paint for flowers , and the sheets are available in a maroon shade (for sanding metal) to model a garden hedge of Copper Beech or Berberis. It cuts with scissors. But your hedge is perfect for a cameo with a hedge trimming machine forever at work.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Yes, the dish scouring pads do make for good manicured hedges that you might find in a townscape.

[@carllawton9520]

Looks great thank you 👍

[@nicholasbishop3300]

Great idea They look fantastic and soo affordable Well done Nick Australia

[@steveNCB7754]

Very interesting technique (have made notes LOL). Just a point about hedging, at least in the UK. Your example photos showed, perhaps understandably, relatively modern hedges that have been flail-cut using a tractor-mounted flail. Such mechanisation didn’t really start appearing until after WW2 and many of the early machines were relatively primitive belt-driven ones, as well as being mounted on tractors that were much less able than those of today. This means you need to ‘check your references’ for both the region (where perhaps drystone walling was more prevalent) that you are modelling and the time period, because manually ‘laying’ a hedge was originally the traditional technique and this would have continued for many years after mechanisation came in. Needless to say, a hand-laid hedge (done, say every 5-7 years) looks very different to one cut (often annually) with a flail hedge trimmer.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thanks Steve for sharing your insights, I can certainly imagine there would be numerous factors involved in a hedgerows appearance. Location, era, botanical type, season, soil, terrain... the list goes on, but fortunately Station Road is not set in any specific location or modelled on an actual area, so the hedgerows will act as a suggestion to create the rural atmosphere.

[@monham5041]

Nice work. The wire brush idea is great. I've already made one for my layout minus the hotglue. 😀 Thanks for the Tips. 👍 Mon from Monsville Railways.

[@barrystark3603]

Very good going to have ago myself 👍

[@timsully8958]

Hi Jules! I dunno, it’s just not fair that real life gets in the way of model railways 😡 In fairness mate, your idea of ‘not much’ is more than some people’s idea of ‘loads’ so you do yourself an injustice! 😄 That is such a fantastic method for producing hedges and long grass scrub. It really looks effective when painted up and no wonder you’re happy with it. I’d go as far as to say it beats the hell out of most expensive off the shelf efforts in terms of realism and dimension, plus of course every section is unique and so doesn’t look uniform 😎 Needless to say I am most likely going to shamelessly steal your method as it suits me perfectly 😜 Have a great weekend mate and make some time for yourself 🍀👍🍻

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thanks Tim. Steal away, that's the whole idea🙂. I was thinking the other day, I've got 13 years until retirement, then I can really notch it up on the channel, assuming KZbin will still exist in 2036.

[@christopherclarke9316]

I am seeing a reduced size version of this application to suggest overgrown, uncut, uneaten grass under a fence line. Applied before the fence is installed, or alongside a wall. Nice idea.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

That would definitely work, I'll have to give that a go also🙂

[@glynrowe2518]

Another great cost effective alterative to commercial products. Having grown up in rural Shropshire may I give a little insite to how hedges have changed depending on the era you model. In 1997 regulations were introduced banning cutting of hedges between March & Sept. So if you model privatization era onwards the examples you showed are perfect for this era. Pre 1997 hedges were mostly cut down to about 4ft in the spring. So if you model BR Blue era in the summer you should trim the tops level. In Steam days there were few mechanical hedge cutters so they were left to grow very large up to 20ft high before being cut right back to about 3ft and traditionally layed.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thank you Glyn for sharing this very insightful information. Station Road is set between the late 50's to early 70's so I'm guessing hedgerows could have looked quite wild at times before trimming?

[@peterwalker6535]

Really appreciate your technique videos. Look forward to trying this out. Many thanks.

[@tonywincott8448]

Looks awesome, great work. just what i need to start making, I was making hedges today with extruded Polystyrene sheets cut into thin strips. Yours looks so much better.

[@marknicholson2281]

That looks great. I’ve used rubberised horsehair before but that looks just as good and is both easier to find and much cheaper. Thanks and looking forwards to your layout progress and more tips.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

I originally learnt about the rubberised horsehair being a great material for making hedges and the like, but do you think I could find a supplier here in NZ?.... no. So that's what lead me to coconut fibre which is readily available here.

[@eddyweller4503]

Great idea Julian, those hedges look the part, might try this out, over the years you've come up with some really useful ideas, I made some stone walling from cat litter you suggested a few years ago, I made a template, and I line it with cling film and I've reused it several times. It's not always about saving money although it is great to do so but I get satisfaction from making things myself, and often they don't have that totally uniform look of bought items. So thanks for the ideas, I am lucky enough to only work 2 days a week now, my choice, and even then I find with grandkids and household stuff I can't spend the time I would like on my railway, so I don't know how fitting in a full time job would be. Take care Julian, see you next time, Eddy xx

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thanks Eddy. It certainly can be a juggle fitting in a hobby with family life and work, but somehow I find some time. One aspect I can't really achieve is a regular production schedule, so video's get released quite randomly.

[@jamfjord]

Good idea and nice work. I love how wild you made this look, but you could probably go even further with the messiness if you wanted to! In terms of the species in British hedgerows (at least here in Northern England) there's a huge and varied mix, but you'll often find hawthorn (lots!), ash, hazel, brambles (blackberry etc), yew and even oak trees, all heavily pruned and truncated, as well as gorse sometimes. Hedgerows in this country can be extremely mature and may have existed as a boundary for hundreds of years, meaning that some of the shrubs and trees in there could be very old examples with quite thick trunks and limbs, and the appearance can vary markedly along the length of a hedgerow, in quite a patchy way. Sorry, not sure if I'm explaining that well, but my family on one side were farmers, and very outdoorsy on the other (my grandmother made jam from all the fruits she picked out of rural hedgerows), so I seem to have spent a lot of my early life looking at hedgerows and being told stuff about them. 😂 I'd be happy to go out and take photos of hedgerows to illustrate what I'm trying to explain if that would help, or indeed prototypical examples of anything else you're building. Anyway, I'll stop going on about it and just say thanks for another excellent video and great set of tips 🙏👍

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thank you for sharing your insights/knowledge of hedgerows, it's fascinating to catch a glimps into the experiences of rural settings in the UK. There some similarities here in NZ, one being overgrown blackberry hedgerows along the roadsides where people stop to pick berries.

[@jamfjord]

@@StationRoadModelRailway I guess so, that would make sense. I think I did notice that when I visited. Exploring NZ is probably an interesting experience for a lot of Brits; so much that's familiar, but also so much that's very, very different from the UK. I really hope I'll return to New Zealand one day

[@billforrest4205]

No idea if rubberised horse hair is available down in NZ but I have used it quite a lot to good effect alongside choir/coconut matting. Another rather outside the box Item (which I get for free which was the Incentive to try it) Is floor scrubber pads, the large round industrial type. They are color coded for their roughness and I've used the green and brown ones to good effect for the same thing, hedgerows. These are used ones that would otherwise be thrown away, If you know any industrial cleaners then you can get them free.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

I scoured the internet in NZ for rubberised horsehair without any luck, hence why I adopted the coconut fibre as an alternative.

[@_RandomPea]

Love these, reminds me of Blue Peter in the 90s lol😂 I've also seen modellers using this stuff as a base layer prior to laying static grass, apparently it works well on large builds. Have you tried that?

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

I haven't come across this material being used as a base layer, but I can certainly imagine it would work well. I haven't tried it myself.

[@philipgreenwood166]

Hi Julian, good idea, I just picked up on your channel though a link that's just been posted on the scale model scenery. I noticed your in NZ like myself. Do mind telling me where in NZ you are? I am also in the every early stages of starting my model, which will hopefully be as accurate a model as I can get from half a world away of Heaton Norris Junction which is just North of Stockport Viaduct.

[@StationRoadModelRailway]

Thanks Philip. That is the trickiest aspect modelling a setting that is half a world away. Fortunately there's loads of material (magazines, video channels) that cover every inch of railways in the UK. I certainly wish you all the best in your modelling endeavours. I'm based in Christchurch.

[@w.rustylane5650]

I really don't understand the labeling on products. Matt spray should be matt not clear. Clear spray should be clear and not matt.