Photo: A magical, easily-missed corner of Paul Abrams track at Iden

Foreground moss, nearby hedge-plants, mid-distance shrubs and distant mature trees give a startling depth to this tiny landscape.

Living trees and hedges closer to the track need to be closer to the trains in scale:

• slow-growing or naturally small varieties of large trees,
• shrubs pruned to mimic tree shapes,
• 'Bonsai' trees
• moss

Small Varieties

While Dwarf trees are quick, budget for eventual replacement, since even a Dwarf variety of a very big tree can be hefty. Be aware that some 'dwarf' trees soon grow "as small as a house":

Locomotive: Fred Phipps kit. Landscape and Photo: Simon Castens

Just one trunk-like stem in this hedge lends sudden massiveness to the locomotive bearing down on the camera. That's all it takes.

Nicely scaled and pruned planting close to a track.

Bonsai ! - the art of stunting tree growth

Although this method isn't pukka Japanese Bonsai, it's simple, effective and adirt-cheap way of creating small trees that stay small.

1. Buy or grow a small-leaved tree seedling or cutting in compost in a plastic plant pot.
2. Once it grows enough to verge on becoming pot-bound, prune it towards a tree-like shape.
3. Cut away the bottom third of the pot with stout garden scissors, and hack off all that part of the roots with an old serrated bread knife.
4. Plant an identical plant-pot in the ground, with decent drainage below.
5. Fill the empty pot in the ground a third full with a soil-bearing compost.
6. Drop the dazed tree, pot and all, into the second pot, and press it down to avoid an air pocket.
7. Give it a good soak and be sure to keep it well watered till it finds new feet.
8. Lift out the inner pot whenever the tree starts to look too cocky.
9. Prune it even more tree-like (without needing to grovel on the ground, notice) and again hack away te lower third of the root with an old serrated bread knife.
10. GO TO Step 4.

Until eventually you and the tree have a falling out, in which case choose between a bigger pot, or a new location, or finding a successor for it.

Butterley Garden Railway, planted by Max Bryce around 1990

Top Tip: If trees are raised above ground level, stand them in troughs or gutters full of soil for ease of watering, and grow lots and lots of moss and ground cover between them.

Here's the hidden side of an easy-watering trough; guttering packed full of mosses and ground-cover plants, and covered with chicken wire to stop foraging birds kicking the moss away:

Weed out anything that sticks it's head above the parapet, and all the Public sees from the front is a suitably scruffy miniature hedgerow behind the Gauge 1 track, like this:

On the subject of miniature hedges, here Box and Ivy represent scale trees, while moss represents scale hedges:

In fact the whole scene uses authentic materials; stone represents stone, cement represents concrete, crushed stone represents ballast, wood represents sleepers, and spiked rail represents spiked rail.