Hedgerow and Turnips

To the rear are two fields. Root crops were common, except a report from the 1930s cited the station "surrounded by bean fields".

This field is planted with turnips. The field has much less depth than the prototype. Ordinarily, we might have let the field run off the edge of the baseboard to give impression of it being deeper but a hedgerow was needed to further hide trains in the rear siding come fiddle yard.

The hedgerow was made following a technique used by Barry Norman on Petherick etc. and that is a green matted plate scourer about 5mm thick for the sturdy core and covered in Woodland Scenics matting for branches and leaves.

The tress (actually two there) are sprigs of dead sedum flower heads grouped into tree like form. The resulting tree is then upturned and dunked in a mix of green water based paint and PVA glue with a few drops of washing up liquid, shaken off and Morrisons dried flat leaf parsley sprinkled over - very effective, but will it hold its colour over time?

The field was first laid with my own mix of soil. The basis of this being scatter brown dust from Woodland Scenics I think, mixed with other finely sieved scatter materials including sawdust that gives a representation of flint stones common on a chalk landscape.

And so to the turnips. Rows of PVA glue and, yes you guessed it, Morrisons dried flat leaf parsley sprinkled over and left until the glue drys with the excess then being vacuumed off.

David