O Scale	Wargaming	Architectural	Narrow Gauge	Tools+

Building the GM413 Fordhampton Nursery - Part 2

TERRY SMITH shows how to turn the Fordhampton Nursery Kit into a garden centre.

As promised in a previous edition of Right Lines, I will now show you how to create a garden centre using the GM413 Fordhampton Nursery kit. Below are some of the items we have used in making this diorama, but you may well already have your own bits and pieces to create the scene.

There is no hard and fast rule on creating something like this, and you can visit Garden Centres near you for inspiration. I used the GM23 Gravel Mat as the basis of the ground covering for our centre. This also doubled as the car park! I found some Faller embossed card walling sheets when I was looking for suitable material to represent the stone and brick paths that you see in these centres. They are actually N Scale, but look right for OO Scale paving. The cards used were FA222565 and FA222567.

They can be easily cut with scissors, but I decided to use the complete sheets, laying them side by side to represent both the inside and the outside parts of the centre. Initially I laid out the buildings that we were going to use and the location of the plants without sticking anything down, to see which layout looked best. Below is a shot of a temporary scene that I decided against.

After laying it out however, I did decide that this is where the paving would be situated on our diorama. The two Faller sheets were stuck down side by side leaving a border between them and the GM161 Dark Green Hedgerow that is going to surround the garden centre.

A couple of items that I felt would be right at home in the centre are the GM451 Laser Cut Wooden Fences, and the GM453 Garden Shed. These are actually cut from real wood so they look very realistic.

I used part of the fencing as supplied but snapped apart the others to create individual panels like you would see on sale. I also did this to the shed, and it creates a nice little area on the outside part of the nursery.

I added some model pallets which are obtainable from Modelscene and Preiser, and torn off clumps of grass matting were glued onto them to represent turf.

This finished shot of the nursery must have been taken very early in the morning as the customers car park is still empty. You will see various plants and vegetation which has come from the Gaugemaster Scenics range, and the bright colours really bring the garden centre to life.

Adding a few appropriate model figures to the scene also enhances the realism and we have a huge range of figures available from Faller, Noch, and Preiser.

An alternate approach was used by James Hickman on the model he built for our shop layout. Note James has painted the main parts of the buildings a dark colour and has given the glass a very realistic whitewashed effect.

We hope you have as much fun as we have putting this garden centre together, using the many interesting and suitable products available from Gaugemaster.

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