Shrubberies

I will be the first to admit that my shrubbery is not the most beautiful shrubbery in the history of shrubberies. My shrubbery is not even on the 1000 best shrubberies list. That said, I still like my bushes, and when it’s set on the terrain it looks good, at least to me.

Our shrubberies are easy to make and we include it amongst our destructible objects- it is not fastened to a hex but rather a poker chip base, so it can be removed at any time. A bush usually has one life and a defense of 3 or 4. Sometimes if we’re playing a really wild game the shrubbed areas actually grow.





Anything I was going to make had to be both cheap and easy. I don’t have a lot of spare time or money, and I have lots of kids who Scape so things had to be durable and easy to fix.

I looked through this site before I started working on shrubbery. I’m not a crafty guy and I had no idea what to do. Also, I have a very strong aversion to glue. I’m not allergic to it or anything; I just find it somehow wrong. I’m not sure, but I think glue is banned by the Valhalla society as well. Glue just isn’t right.

We didn’t own the jungle set. It has just come to us recently, when Santa Claus saw it on clearance. Now we have one. Those jungle shrubs and trees are okay, but they’re not destructible and we are quite used to that. We’ve spoiled ourselves with shrubberies.

Anyway, I read something or other about using aquarium plants. First I went to a fish store. Too expensive! Then I went to a big chain Pet store. Too expensive! Then I tried Wally World. Too expensive for poor me.

I searched the Internet for all sorts of miniature terrain and there is some really fascinating stuff out there made out of wire and old car parts and all kinds of crazy things. But it’s not cheap and most of it was the very opposite of easy.

My Valhalla turned out to be the local dollar store. It’s a good one. I bought: poker chips for bases, contact cement (yuk glue!), acrylic paint, modeling clay, and foliage.

They have a big section at the back with fake plastic flowers that look awful. I’d only imagined that old ladies with poor eyesight browsed that section of the store, but there I was, flitting through the ferns and elbowing old ladies aside. Besides the stems of tulips and things they also have just foliage, which is completely adaptable and it’s only a dollar.

My first attempt was to build a mound of modeling clay on a poker chip and then stick little sprigs of plastic leafys into it. I made two. The dollar store modeling clay never really dried, it was always kind of sticky and that annoyed me. (I have four kids and everything is sticky- I had to draw the line somewhere)

Okay, out went the modeling clay. I bought these great poker chips; thick, heavy- I think they may have been clay rather than plastic and they were my first bases, and they were really good, but then they all vanished- I think they must have been returned to China in that big contains-lead recall. I didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t get past first base…

Okay no nice poker chips. Flimsy plastic chips snuck into the dollar store to replace the nice ones. With nothing else to choose from, I have grown to like them as much as one can like cheap flimsy plastic poker chips.

Then one day the dollar store had something called “grass mats”. They were incredible. They look like a little mat but what they really are is a frame with about forty little tufts of little fake plants- the perfect thing. Then I saw them at Michael’s craft store- same mat- but nine bucks! My advice is to stick with the dollar store.

Eventually as time passed I threw out the things that didn’t work and kept the ideas that did. I’ve got it down to a quick, cheap, easy system. We have more than a hundred and fifty shrubs in five different styles, and I think that is more than enough bushes for anyone. Except maybe Dr. Weirdscaper.





This is the cheap easy way I made them:

1) Take plastic poker chips from the dollar store. Drill a little hole in the center.

2) Glue a metal washer on the bottom. (If you glue the washer on first and then drill the hole, the glue will give and the whole thing will come apart. I learn the hard way.)
The metal washers make them more expensive, but it raises them up a bit and gives them stability (and in a house full of cats and kids, it helps them to stay where they were put on the hex field.)

3) Paint the poker chip however you like. (usually green)

4) For shrubbery I put a ½” long screw in from the bottom, usually a number 5 Robertson. (though I think Robertson screws are unique to Canada- any kind would do really). The washer raises the poker chip off the ground enough so the screw head is flush with the washer and the whole thing isn’t wobbly because of the weight at the bottom. That especially helps if the forest and brush is thick.

5) Then I stick the plastic plants onto the screw. I usually have to rotate them on- screw them on really. They don’t come off. No glue required!

Finished.

If I’m really feeling enthusiastic I will reach in through the foliage and touch up the screw with green paint too.

I suppose it would be easier to glue the little plastic shrubs to the poker chips and cut out the screws and possibly the metal washers all together. But then they’d be flimsy. And did I mention I don’t like glue? And screwing bushes makes me happy.