You can make reasonable looking hedges with very little expense. I saw the original concept a decade ago in an article, probably in MWAN. I don't have the article anymore, so this process is original, but the idea belongs to a gamer who wrote an earlier article. The materials you will need are scenic grass; white glue and green scrubbing pad material. I used Woodland Scenics green blend, Elmers glue and a generic dark green scrubbing pad that is available in the local grocery, hardware and home renovation stores. I made more than 20 feet of hedge with an investment of less than $10 for all the materials.
First, cut the scrub pad into the desired height for the scale of figures you want to use the terrain for. For this example, I cut mine 8" long by 15mm high. I chose 15mm high because I made the hedges to be used with my WWII 20mm collections. Make sure that one of the edges along the length is as straight as you can make it. This straight edge will be used later to glue the hedge to a base, so try to keep it relatively clean of scenic grass and cut it as straight as you can. In my example, this would be one of the 8" edges. In the examples, I will refer to the dimensions in my example. Please feel free to expand or reduce these dimensions to appropriately fit the scale of the figures you are going to use with this terrain.
Prepare a "bath" of the scenic grass by dumping a good amount into a long, wide basin. I use a plastic silverware drawer holder about 1.5" deep, 10" long and about 2" wide.
Taking one of the pre-cut strips of the scrub pad material, apply white glue evenly on one of the wide and long faces, the 8" by 15mm face. Spread the glue evenly and relatively thick. The scrub pad will absorb much a lot of white glue. Not too much that it drips or runs. This may take some practice. I use a modeling toothpick to spread the glue out evenly. The thicker application of glue will provide a degree of rigidity to the final product after everything dries. If the glue is too thin, the scenic grass will not properly stick to the scrub pad.
Place the wet face of the scrub pad into the scenic grass bath. I put mine with the glue saturated side face down. I then push the scrub pad into the scenic grass to get a healthy amount of the grass on the scrub pad. Repeat this process for all the hedge strips you are preparing. Let this dry. I usually do about 4 hedge strips at a time and leave them in the scenic grass bath to dry over night. I have found that flipping them wet side up after I press them into the scenic grass bath will show me spots where the scenic grass has adhered enough and I sprinkle some scenic grass onto these spots and press it into the scrub pad until there isn't any glue "wetness" showing through.
Once dry, repeat the process for the opposite 8" by 15mm side. Again, let this dry. This will leave the top and ends of the hedges still to be completed.
Next, apply the white glue to the top of the hedge, or the side that is away from the base of the hedge that you will be gluing to a base. Push the wet side down into the scenic grass bath, as you did with the side. Again, leave to dry.
Once dry, I usually do both ends at the same time following the same process of applying the glue (to both ends) and then dipping one end into the scenic grass bath and then the other. I might take the opportunity at this time to do any touchups to other areas that I might have missed.
This will give you four 8" hedges. Pick your mounting material of choice. The mounting base will be slightly longer that the original length of the scrub pad since the scenic grass applied to the ends of the hedge will add some length to it. I have found that I can standardize the production of hedges considerably by either cutting the bases 1/8" longer or decreasing the length of the hedge by 1/8". I personally prefer to cut the hedge shorter by 1/8", which allows me to work with, to me, the more difficult material of the base and cut it to a standard length. Depending on the thickness of the scenic grass and how much glue you use, you may find these dimensions slightly different for you. Through luck and discovery, I find that having the hedge edges as close to the base edges allows me to put the hedges down as terrain and I have not needed to make corner hedges. If the base is too wide or too long, the bases will get in the way and the hedges will not touch end to end or at ninety degrees.
Apply white glue to the base edge of the hedge and glue to your base. I use inexpensive vinyl tile for this. I cut the tile into 8" x 1/4" strips. The tile provides a good weight to the base. It is hard to work with, though, in such thin strips and I have to be very careful not to crack the strips as I make them. A brown tile works well, in my opinion, since I don't have to paint it. At this point, after the hedge dries to the base, you can terrain the base by painting or by gluing additional scenic grass or dirt around the base of the hedge or painting the edges of the base. Earlier, I mentioned that I make the bases fit the completed hedge almost exactly for the purposes of setting them end to end and perpendicular to each other with no gaps. Overly large bases would cause a gap where the hedges should adjoin, but they would allow you to terrain the base of the hedges more.
After I finished the entire batch of the hedges I'm making and based them, I spray a simple matte finish on them to "fix" the fluffy scenic grass to the hedge. I use the hardware store Matte Finish spray, since it's slightly glossy when you use it on figures, but it's matted significantly when you use it on scenic grass. It is less expensive, normally, than the Matte Finish I use for my painted figures.
In conclusion, this is just a simple, cost effective method of making war game hedges. I made about 20 plus feet of these so I could quickly put together the terrain for the Normandy bocage and Allies drive into Holland. I use the hedge and bocage hedge terrain that I make interchangeably, although there is a significant physical difference between a Dutch house garden hedge and hedgerows of the bocage. The hedge making process described above will give you hedges that look very similar to each other, which is also relatively unreal. However, they are light weight and sturdy. I stack 20 something feet of these in one small box for travel to the wargame club house with no apparent damage to them. Since I use the vinyl tile, they stay where I put them on the table and don't slide around or fly off the table from the wind when the club door gets opened, etc. I have made hedges of different lengths so that I can create any number of terrain features, including house gardens, farm field hedges and road "liners" by using a mix of different sizes. I standardized these sizes to 3", 4", 6", 7" and 8" hedge pieces.
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© Copyright 2003 Hal Thinglum
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