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I'm putting together a collection of scenery and one of the things I want is a good collection of woods.

I've done a lot of searching before making this topic and I know there have been countless discussions on the subject already and most of the topics across wargaming forums say the same things: use model railway trees, go to your local hobby store or pick some up from ebay.

I have 2 problems with this because 1. It's vague and 2. these threads are often a few years old.

It's 2014 and I think we can do better than that.

Where have you purchased your trees from and what brands did you buy? How many millimeters/inches is a good size and do you have any pictures?

Let's make this thread an invaluable resource for getting good trees for our tables.

Here are the sort of trees I would LOVE:



Sadly I have no idea what brand these trees are. Even on the blog this picture is drawn from is a lonely comment asking about them but with no response (making me sure that many are just as lost as me.) I thought I came pretty close with Gale Force Nine's pine trees:



Sadly these trees are now OOP (gf9 do make some other great trees which I am considering if I can't find good pine trees).

There's also woodland scenics, but they don't look as nice IMO:



I am struggling to find a good supplier in the UK though (any tips?)

I'm not just looking for answers towards my pine tree quest. I want to know what trees do you use (be specific, brand names if you can). Pictures of you have them would be great, and links to web stores would be amazing as well!

Let's make this a great thread for DakkaDakka!

Faller do some great trees:

more available here (loads more)

Wow Bubber, that's a great link. Thanks!



I'm incredibly interested in the Noch 26327 and 26322. Both sets contain 10 spruce trees, 4 are 20cm 6 are 17cm. For around £13.

It's amazing value and I went straight through to the checkout only to find they are currently out of stock, oh well! :(

I'm going to keep checking this site as at that price these trees look perfect!

Thanks again


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I found a last bag of 26322 from http://www.howardscenicsupplies.co.uk and quickly snapped them up. When they arrive I'll post pictures with them alongside miniatures. 10 cost me £15 after shipping.

Glad to help.

A large number of the bottle brush trees are rebranded K&M trees. When K&M was bought by PECO, they stopped selling to companies that rebranded them... You can still get the K&M originals though:

http://www.peco-uk.com/prodtype.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=3288&numRecordPosition=1

Check your model train shops - they will be full of trees from other manufacturers as well. Some will be simple bottle brush style, others will be more realistic with sculpted trunks and branches. Not really the answer you had in mind...but its true. Full of them... Also (again, not the answer) Chinese junk from eBay. They often sell boxes crammed full of the bottle brush style trees on eBay, you can pick them up cheap.

Now - more to your question...which trees do I use? All of them. Terrain, trees in particular are an important part of the battlefield. They prevent movement, provide cover and make it look more interesting. I tend to prefer more realistic looking trees though...reinforced with liberal amounts of spray varnish to keep them from shedding during use. I like Woodland Scenics - especially their metal armatures. I like JTT Microscale. Heki and Bachman have a descent selection of bottle brush trees that look OK. Busch aren't too bad either. Noch do some excellent trees which are not too poorly detailed for the price. Timberline and Grand Central make some of the best pine trees. Canyon Creek are a little better though... You also have things like Pegasus Palms, Bananas and Cacti, not to mention a hundred or so other smaller companies. And of course, making them from scratch.

Size wise - I like my trunks to be about as wide as a man's waist to start with for trees (shrubbery and brush being a different issue). The height will depend on what it takes to get at least that diameter on the trunk. Normally it ends up being 4+" tall - with many being in the 8" or so range. I have some that are over two feet tall though, and a couple that are really more terrain that are even taller than that (a wood elf city made from PVC pipes and other bits...).

My Noch 26322 trees arrived today, 10x 17-20cm. Around £15 in total after shipping. I am VERY pleased with them!!

They look great!
If you do a winter board, try lightly spraying them from above with white primer for a simple snow effect.

Great idea! I haven't decided on the season of my scenery yet, but as my miniature bases have dead (scorched) grass, both Autumn and Winter are possibilities~ perhaps autumn with a light snow.

The next step is getting these based. I want to base them all individually and then create wider flat forest bases.

If anyone has any experience with this I'd love to hear any tips.

How are those trees put together? All one piece or do the tops plug into the little trunk bottom/root pieces? If they plug in, I'd suggest affixing the trunks directly to your forest bases, then using either magnets or a friction fit to allow you to remove individual trees for storage or model placement. Doing so lets you make a seamless piece (except for the outer rim of the forest base), whereas individual bases on a larger base create a lot of artificial rises. Less stable, too, unless you cut holes for the tree bases to plug into.

Also, while the trees look good, generally, they're a bit unnaturally regular. I might consider squishing them around a little to break that up. The tops, especially (since the branches are shorter and resultantly stiffer), have a distinct and even spiral that screams "bottle brush." Disrupt those lines and they'll look even better.

My quest for great looking modular forests came to an end recently, and I would like to update you all on its conclusion.

I bought some pre painted modular forest bases from Dragon and Serpent Gaming and they are FANTASTIC. Exactly what I was looking for.

I bought 3 bases of varying sizes and they came to £20.50 in total (including shipping).

Outstanding value because not only are they very professionally modeled and painted, each base comes with 2 sets of disc inserts for every slot on the base. The first set have resin boulders on them. The second set are flat and are designed to stick trees onto.

The base and inserts are made of MDF.

I went ahead and stuck my Noch 26322s onto them. Please see the results below.











Personally it couldn't have worked out better. I spent £35 in total and came away with 3 forests that look INCREDIBLE imo and I did zero work haha!

Actually I have enough trees to fill one more of the large bases (with 4 slots) as trees don't have to fill every slot on the base, so it will work out at even better value.

Here is a link to Dragon and Serpent Gaming's ebay store: Click here

Spiffy! Thought the price was a little stiff for MDF bases until I reread the post (coffee hasn't kicked in, yet...) - prepainted and come with boulder inserts, along with the flats? That's not a bad deal, at all.

Glad you got your forests sorted out and especially that you shared the results. I've been working on forest stands, myself, so this is quite well timed.

Link for Dragon and Serpent Gaming? Nothing showing up in Google...

@oadie thanks for commenting! It was actually your last comment that led me in search of bases with inserts as I agree it makes a much more natural looking forest and is the easiest for WHFB.

You can buy the MDF bases bare from Dragon and Serpent Gaming for about half the price, I think it's definitely worth getting them pre painted if you want to put together a table of scenery as easily as possible.

@timd there is a link at the bottom of my previous post straight to their eBay store. Their ebay handle is "dands-gaming"