If someone ever was to compile a FAQ on how to do a certain type of terrain, it is my personal guess that how to do palm trees would feature at least near the top. You can use these things for so many regions and periods that it is amazing. But finding decent palm trees in model RR stores is nearly impossible and the ones made for cakes look very plastic. So here is a good DIY guide:

What you will need is electrical cable, gauze, thin card, your usual glues & paints and a base to mount the palm trees on. That is it.

Cut the wire (earth cable is the best IMHO) to the length you want your palm to have in the end and mount them to the base. Since you want the wire to stand up and not hold it in place half day it is best to use hot glue for it. In this case I mounted the wires on a CD. They have become en vogue over the past year or two since everyone seems to have so many of them lying around (thanks to AOL and burner hick-ups) and I just wanted to try it out!

Next you cut a strip of gauze about 5mm wide and wrap that around your wire. You need begin at the top and work your way down other wise your palm look like it had grown like a stalactite. You just need a drop of white glue at the top and bottom of the wire to glue the gauze to the wire. And make sure that the gauze overlaps itself. (If you want two or more palm trees to grow close to one another it is best to wrap the gauze strip around them first and then glue them to the base.) After this has dried you can give the bend some final adjustments and you should cut away single fibres sticking out off the gauze if they are too long (1mm or 2mm).

Next up you paint your bark. I used a medium brown highlighting it with brown that has lots of white mixed in. Depending on the region you want to depict you should change the colour of the bark.

Next up come the leaves. You take your card an cut off a strip as wide that has the desired width of your leaves. You fold that in half and cut tear shapes out. The shape might vary depending the region your tree comes from. After that you cut lots of small slits into the leaf. This is best done while the tear shapes are still folded. The cuts should be not further apart then 1mm. Now unfold the leaves and brush over the ends to separate the cuts. Glue the leaves together in a vague star shape using paper glue. It is best to arrange them without glue first to see how it will look. After this has dried, bend the ends down. Now you paint the leaves according to taste. I just used a medium green painting on a stripe of a darker shade along the fold line. Again the colour can vary according to region and the amount of water your palm gets.

Now you just glue your leaf star on top of the trunk. If you need coconuts (beware hardly any palms actually have coconuts) just take some peas, paint them brown and glue them under the leaves.

After this all that is left to do is decorate the base.

This method can look quite lengthy, especially if you do just one or two trees, but if you mass produce them you can easily do 30 in one afternoon.