The final area of Model Railway landscaping that I wish to talk about with regard to using Grass Tufts, is all the area beyond the tracks. Essentially, there are two main areas to consider - town and country. Considering the town first, there are public spaces (parks, sports grounds, road-sides and gardens around public buildings) and there are non-public spaces. These latter will be mainly gardens around homes.

Much the same treatment can be used for public spaces and for non-public spaces. Many of the areas can be decorated by first using sections of grass mat (which come in a great range of colours and lengths of 'grass'. I suggest that this is used as a base on which add grass tufts depending upon what you are trying to achieve. A private garden may have, at the edge of a lawn, a row of neatly placed tufts with coloured tips to suggest flowers or flowering bushes. So too, a public garden. Think of the back-yards that you pass in a train, however. Many of these are a mixture of green lawn and long, dead grass. Possibly a line of dry grass along a fenceline. In real life, a fenceline is difficult to mow. Consequently, grass there can grow quite high and then die. When you are placing the tufts in position, the best way is to use tweezers to hold the tuft, put a touch of wood glue onto the base and then press it into position. It is quite okay to glue a tuft straight onto a grass mat, if the situation calls for a tuft or two. 

In country areas, a common decorating method is to use either grass mats; or apply grass fibre using either a 'puffer bottle' NO08100 (for short fibres up to 2.5 mm long) or an electrostatic gun (such as the Noch 'Gras-Master 2' NO60135 (for fibre longer than 2.5 mm). If you are using the grass mat approach, then tufts of various kinds, colours and lengths, can be used to give more detail to particular areas. As an example, slightly darker green tufts can be used in a meandering way across a field, to indicate a slow-moving watercourse. Again, have longer grass on the outside of a fence enclosing animals. Some fields may not have been cultivated for some years and have a build-up of one particular colour of wild flowers. Again, think about what you can see from a railway carriage, beyond the permanent way. 

The main requirements to achieving excellence using tufts and other materials, are observation and imagination.