Apple Tree

An orchard on a layout and in a diorama

The apple tree is among the most rewarding trees of a model landscape. It is low and spreading and it gives away at once that we are looking at tended ground, not at wild growth. Four pieces in the package are enough for a small orchard by a farmstead, for an avenue along a path or for a garden behind a house.

Finished by hand

Fruit and foliage are applied to the armature by hand, piece by piece. That is exactly why two trees from the same package never come out with precisely the same shape of crown or the same arrangement of fruit, which with model vegetation is an advantage rather than a flaw.

Dimensions

The height runs between 5.08 cm and 7.62 cm. In the sizes usual for railroad layouts that matches an older, fully grown fruit tree; in the larger scales of dioramas it will serve as a younger planting or as bushy growth by a wall.

Fixing it in a scene

Under the trunk there is a pin by which the tree is pushed into a soft base. Anyone who does not want to drill into the board fits the disc supplied and stands the tree up. An orchard can therefore be set out dry first and fixed only once the composition has been agreed.

The spacing gives away the intent

A fruit planting seldom grows at random. The viewer reads a regular spacing in a row as a farming intent, and a loose scatter as a garden gone wild by an abandoned farmstead. Either is a legitimate picture; it is just good to decide in advance, because a mixed composition looks awkward. A low fence or a strip of taller grass all around then closes the whole off and gives it a legible boundary.

The colors of the fruit and the leaves may vary slightly from one piece to another.