Continuing work on the lawn. The grass mat I will be using is Savannah TuftGrass by Heki from Scenery Express. It has low and high grasses in variegated coloration to simulate a late autumn lawn. It’s pricey, but the look is spot on in scale for a poorly kept lawn with some overgrown and dying spots in the grass. The sheets are only 6″ wide, though they are 17″ long, so there are places on the landscaping board that will need to be pieced. I bought four sheets, which should be plenty.
The backing of the grass is a clear, rubbery substance though not sticky. This makes it more flexible than the grass mat I had used for The Aero Squadron Lounge, which will be good for the uneven landscape I need to cover.
I cut the side piece to fit.
To make the divide between the grass and the dirt look less planned, I tore the grass mat backing along the house edge, removing only the tiniest bit of material.
I spread glue on the base board and on the edges of the grass mat.
I pressed it into place and then moved on to the front pieces. Here the side and side front are shown mostly filled in. The camera tends to flatten things, so you can’t really see just how well the grass conforms to the uneven ground underneath. There will eventually be finishing trim along the edges of the baseboard (I now do this finishing step from the beginning to make things easier).
For a bit of non-grass vegetation, I have the Goldenrod Weeds “Silflorettes” by MiniNatur. These come all webbed together, and you cut the stalks off the web to apply individually. I have summer, late summer, and autumn colors but I might not use the summer ones for this particular project. The others have softer, muted tones.
These are obviously not in-scale goldenrod stalks for 1:12 scale, but they do look like little flowering plants. I used an awl to make holes in the ground to plant them. I left the awl in place while I prepped the individual flowers for planting, otherwise I’d lose track of the hole.
I’ll be adding more, but I already love the way they look.
Here you can see the ballast dirt dried to a nice dark color. :]
I had to piece the grass mat together in many places, so I saved every corner and edge removed from the larger sheets. I used these scraps to fill in areas where the grass sheets met the house and each other. If you look to the left, you can see it wasn’t always seamless.
If you have something that sticks out and could be mistaken for sloppy work instead of a planned aesthetic, often the best solution is to draw more attention to it. I used the goldenrod flowers as well as Extra Long Autumn Tufts “Silflorettes” by MiniNatur — little clumps of grass material that you apply individually to fill in here and there — to address a few of the problem areas. The autumn tones coordinate perfectly with the grass mat while looking like a different sort of weed grass.
Your eye is now drawn to these plants and not to the bare patches and inconsistent seams between the grass sheets. :D
I have the other side to tackle next and more planned for finishing this side as well, but wow, does a little greenery ever change the look of the house! :D
