(V2) Operation Make-a-Garden: Building Stand-Alone Gardens and Allotments
BY JOE BILTON
It’s all well and good creating a fantastic-looking house for your wargame table – but if you want to stop it looking like it’s just been plonked on the table, you need a garden!
Adding a garden or yard to a house makes a significant impact on the appearance of the piece on the table. It helps to ‘place’ the building and tells a story about the location. It also provides visual interest and tactical options. It can be tempting to attach the house to a larger board and build a permanent garden around it. While that does produce a very realistic terrain piece where the building and the garden are joined together perfectly, the downside is it’s more difficult to store a building-base combination. The other issue with this approach is that it reduces the flexibility of your terrain collection, as you lose the ability to use the building in a different setting. One compromise is to create a bespoke garden board for a specific building and leave it unattached. This does solve some of the problems, but the garden is of limited use away from its paired building.
I’ve made gardens using both of the above approaches, particularly when modelling a specific location (such as Dead Man’s Corner for a large Normandy table I made last year – see WS&S issue 117). However, I’ve found that creating a large set of standalone gardens is far more useful. I can use them with any building, and I mix and match depending on my table.
The concept behind a standalone garden is that you create a small garden or yard that you can place behind or in front of any house. Creating a set of these gardens with a variety of widths will mean you’ll have something in your collection that can be used whatever the house. Obviously, there’s variation in the dimensions of buildings, but if you measure a few you’ll find they’re generally similar enough that a small range of garden widths will provide something that works for most buildings. You can always cover a mismatch with a separate hedge or wall.
All the standalone gardens I’ve made are based on 3 mm Foamex. It’s rigid, easy to cut, waterproof, and light. If you can’t find Foamex, you can use MDF or foamcore. The garden walls can either be made from scratch, or can be 3D-printed or resin walls and fences from a variety of manufacturers. You don’t need to make everything from scratch – purchasing a range of walls and fences and then being creative with them will give you a great start to your layouts. You also don’t need to stick to rectangular gardens that append to the front or rear of the house. If you cut a square from the corner of the garden, you can create a garden or yard that wraps around the side of the building.
When creating the gardens, don’t be afraid to add lots of details. Try to tell a story with the piece – who lives here? What do they use the garden for? Adding scatter pieces such as sheds, washing lines, dustbins, flowerpots, and wooden boxes adds visual detail and helps to increase the immersion for everyone playing on the table.
Once you have got into the routine of making these, you’ll find it’s very easy to make a batch at a time. A good approach is to develop a little production line, making four or five gardens at a time. They’re quick to make, and they have a significant impact on the appearance and quality of your wargame table. They’re also a good compromise between realism and storage, as well as giving you maximum flexibility with your terrain collection. WS&S
