The bushes are changing colors

As mentioned last week, my layout is undergoing a scenery makeover. The ground had been stripped of all the dark green bushes and grass, and in its place was dirt, dying grass, and lighter green foliage. It was now time for some bushes. Unfortunately, based on what I observed outside I needed round, light-green bushes with splashes of red, orange, and yellow color. Now how could I model that?

Not knowing what to do, I hiked down to the nearest hobby shop to see what they had. The answer was not much. I noticed some bags of old Woodland Scenics lichen labeled in various shades of green, but quickly dismissed them because lichen was "old school" and they looked faded and dead. However, I quickly realized that the dying muted green lichen was EXACTLY what I needed for my bushes! The prices weren't great, despite having tags indicating that this was at least the third hobby store to have them in their inventory. But, I brought them home anyway.

Digging through my stash, I also found some small bags of fall colored ground foam that I had received as a gift during a model railroad event years ago and never knew what to do with. How fortuitous!

I have never worked with lichen before and expected it to come out of the bag in bunches or roundish blobs. Instead, it was large, stringy pieces that I had to cut apart and massage into bush-like shapes. I can't imagine building a layout 30 years ago with only this stuff. But... it did look like bushes. The light green stuff was nice and soft, but the dark green bag had much firmer plants.

As an experiment I tried painting some lightly with red paint in places, almost highlighting certain areas. It was okay but not vibrant enough. The three on the left in the picture below show what they looked like. Okay, but not great.

Then, I dipped parts into thinned down white glue and lightly dipped them into piles of red, orange, or yellow ground foam. I made all sorts of shapes and sizes, not really knowing what I would need. A James Bond movie was on in the background so it wasn't all that tedious, and in fact I had fun. That's good, because I will need to make a bunch.

After about a half-hour I had a pile of ready-to-plant bushes. I took them to the layout, along with some plain green lichen, and started to glue them in place. I attempted to go for natural positioning, and also not overdo it to start. I could always add more later. I quickly realized that I had made many of them too large to be bushes, and for my next batch I will aim for the size of an acorn. But, a pair of scissors quickly sorted it out. 

I also scattered some of the extra ground foam onto areas that already had green bushes, just to give them some color transformation.

Along the fence, more bushes were added. This was the place for the larger ones, which ended up looking like small trees.

At a craft store I also found these premade flowers by JTT, and I may use them eventually. But having seen how much nicer my lichen bushes are these may go into the stash for the future...

I am happy with my first results, and I may start working on other areas of the layout. I also need to experiment with static grass again.