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I'm trying to liven up our club's terrain tables with some greenery which is sorely lacking.
Our terrain takes a real beating: It gets played with, packed, transported and unpacked a hundred times a year. We can't afford the space to keep each tree nicely in bubble wrap, but we can afford to buy trees that cost a bit more to ensure they'll last a while
Our primary games systems tend to be 28mm+ (Fantasy/40k, Malifaux, WMH) so we'd like trees that are probably 3-8" tall. A variety of styles/colours would be nice, but not essential.
A lot of the options that come up when searching are for railway scenics and so I'm really not sure how much damage they can take.


What options exist out there for this kind of thing? Has anyone had any success in making their own trees that are sufficiently durable?
help much appreciated

Sponge is your friend Trasvi.

Have a look here. This article helped me a lot.

https://scottmingus.wordpress.com/2008/12/06/creating-cheap-model-trees-for-your-gaming-table/

I hope it will help you as well.

Cheers.

Toy stores sometimes sell toy trees (usually as part of some larger farm/forest play set, unfortunately) which are in bendy plastic - they look perfectly acceptable for war gaming and are very sturdy.

Also check out the fake flower section in craft shops - although the flowers themselves are mostly unusable for war gaming, there are also fake leaves and other greenery which look fine at 40K scale. And very cheap.

Ditto for plastic aquarium plants from pet shops - mostly awful, but some are perfect for war gaming, and usually cheap.

Dead trees can be made from twisted bunches of wire, splayed out into branches, with a papier mâché layer if you like, and mounted on thin plywood base. Spray black, heavy drybrush of browns, job's a good'un. Very, very hard-wearing.

How do you feel about conifers? Most folks seem to want deciduous trees, but as awesome as they can look, they tend to be more expensive, more fragile, and trickier to store. Flocked 'bottle brush' type evergreens look quite convincing with minimal work, take abuse with minimal shedding, and can be stored in relatively dense bundles with no ill effect. The twisted wire 'trunk' can be easily wrapped and painted to blend with permanent layouts, but also easily plugs into holes/tubes to make modular (great for movement or switching between scales using the one base) forest bases.

Unfortunately, you're a few months late for what I consider prime tabletop forestry season. January means clearance prices on the dregs of Christmas Village (Lemax, etc.) accessories. I snagged 3 bulk bags of trees for $6 a pop, each of which contains 20 trees of various sizes. $20 will net me two tables' worth of heavy (by mass battle game standards, at least) forest, with tree sizes appropriate for anything from 15mm (smallest trees would be rather large, ~2.5x figure height) to 54mm (largest trees would double figure height) scale and beyond.

As an alternative to bottlebrushes I have heard of some using gutter brushes as a base since they come in wider variations making even deciduous trees a possibility with the right flocking.

Woodland Scenics makes trees with foam based foliage that are pretty durable. They also have pins and removable bases with holes for the pins.

Glue the bases to your terrain bases without gluing the trees in place. Makes it possible to store the trees (loosely in a box) and the bases separately, taking up a lot less space.

http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/category/RealisticReadyMadeTrees

http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/RMRT-MG/page/1

T