Dept 56 Village Display Ideas
A Quick Guide to Groundcovers

Whether you are creating a shoreline for Department 56 seaside town, a spooky Halloween graveyard, or historical peek at a Victorian Dickens’ village, you’ll need to think about groundcovers. With a little imagination, you can transform everyday items into grass, sand, leaves, gravel and more. You’ll be rewarded by Christmas miniature villages that look realistic enough for folks to gaze at for hours.

Here’s a collection of ideas for creating your own groundcovers at home.

Dirt

• For the natural look of dirt, sprinkle dried coffee grounds on the base of your display.
• Use molding clay to make dirt look like soft ground.

Sand

• Use sandpaper or a piece of tan carpet sample to make a sandy beach.
• Purchase sand in a variety of colors from hobby stores. Use grey sand for roadsides and meandering paths. Use green sand to make grassy areas.
• For a gritty roads or lanes, add a little sand to paint before applying it to your base.
• To create a sandy groundcover over a wooden base, apply generous amounts of clear drying glue to the base, and shake the sand over the glue. Remove the excess sand from the wood and repeat if necessary.

Grass

• Use indoor/outdoor carpet to make a grassy lawn. Cut the carpet to the exact sizes you need and place over your Styrofoam base.
• Sprinkle dried parsley flakes over the area you want to have covered in grass.
• For dead grass that would look great in a graveyard scene), start with a brown sisal mat (typically used as front door mats.) Add a little green spray paint in some areas to create a patchy look. Cut it to fit and glue in place.
• Use green sandpaper for creating inexpensive grassy areas. Cut it to fit and glue in place.
• In a pinch, purchase grassy ground cover from craft or hobby stores. It’s relatively inexpensive and gets the job done.

Fallen Leaves

• Sprinkle loose tea leaves (not those found in tea bags.) around the base of buildings and figurines. Tea leaves add a variety of colors as well as scents to your village.

Gravel

• To create roadways, shorelines, and railway beds, use bird seed, decorative granule (the kind found in the base of candle holders,) and aquarium rocks in various colors.

Stone

Stones and bricks are used liberally in Christmas village displays for walkways and streets.

• To create sidewalks, use thick hardboard. Cut it to fit your village buildings and paint it gray. Paint it again in Flekstone paint, pencil in some cracks, and fit the board around your houses.
• Use a fabric print of stone, granite or brick.
• Place real stones strategically to hide cords and lights.
• Use charcoal or lava rocks to create a realistic shoreline
• Use fine gray or black sandpaper to make city streets. Cut the pieces to fit between your houses and glue in place.
• For more natural looking streets, use Sculptamold. Mold it into place being careful not to be too perfect. Leave bumps and indentations as needed to create different finishes. Allow it to dry overnight before painting.
• For a brick road, paint Popsicle sticks a brick red color. Cut them down to “brick” size and glue them throughout village.

Wood

• Use real woodchips, wood shavings, or clean sawdust found in pet stores.
• For bales of hay, use small blocks of wood. Cover them in glue and roll them in wood shavings.

Fog

• Start with a black base and spread out white cotton unevenly. Tease and pull the cotton in different directions to create swirling mist. Position miniature Halloween villages or cemetery accessories in the fog.

Water

• Create a lake effect with blue plastic wrap. Position the blue wrap to create bodies of water, including lakes and streams. You can form peaks and waves with it as needed.
• Use mirrors for a frozen pond.
• Cut a good size hole in a Styrofoam base and place a clear brick under it to create a water basin. Carve the surrounding Styrofoam and add features such as dirt, bushes, and trees to make it look more realistic.
• Create a frozen lake by spraying a glass tile with crystal frost product (available at craft and hobby stores).

Use groundcover materials from a variety of sources to create a village that is unique and realistic. You may have to play around with several ideas before you find the one that gives you the effect you are looking for, but your attention to detail will pay off.

Leanne Tremblay is the successful publisher of Hooked On Department 56, a site for ideas on collecting and displaying Department 56 snow villages, Christmas village accessories, and figurines.