In my spare time this weekend, the garden spots finally got the greenery treatment. It took several days for the Scuptamold ground shapes to dry.
Below is what the area looked like yesterday morning. The Scuptamold is dry, the rails are painted, and the retaining wall near the turnout is glued in place. That wall is a concession to adding the longer run-around track for switching, and now having a bit less space for the garden spots.
Since I didn't want flock and grass fiber to get into the gardens, or the existing track ballast, everything was covered up with blue painters tape.
Then creative chaos took over, the scenery supplies and tools came out in force, occupying every available square inch around the work area. It might have been a good idea to move the trains out of the way ...
I started off with a base cover made from matte medium and dirt, topped with flock, more matte medium, sand, and static grass. An approach I used elsewhere on the layout.
For the retaining wall I aimed for an "overgrown grass" effect. I loaded a mix of short and long fibers in the grassinator, and shot the mix into glue on the ledge. It didn't quite work the way I intended, but I got some grass cover and left it at that. The rather ridiculous amount of fibers in the ditch between wall and track, as well as all over the wall, is shown below. I scraped and vacuumed off quite a bit of those fibers afterwards.
I used fine Woodland Scenics ballast mix as ground cover for the parking lot and added some fine green turf to represent moss and weeds.
Once I was confident that I would no longer need the grassinator, I carefully took off the blue tape. The scene looks quite presentable already. The grass got a bit too close to the mainline. Time for the weed whackers to come through again.
As expected the area at the wall looks a bit naked and needs more structure. That's where the trees go. Below photo also shows (not quite sharp) that in the end the overgrown wall effect kind of worked out despite my best efforts to mess it up.
The floor for the Koef shed is next, followed by ballast and weathering for the tracks, and some detailing.
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