You can find premade products to simulate scale vegetation, like reeds, for your scale model figures, scenes, and dioramas. But with a little work, you can create exactly what you want and avoid a store-bought appearance.
Reeds have stalks and long, slender leaves. Looking at references, you’ll see they vary in height, with patches taller than others. Consistent, not identical, is the aim. Start with lengths and diameters of stretched sprue that would be a bit taller than the finished plant.
At the height of the season reeds, often called cattails in the U.S. or bulrushes in the U.K., develop a seed pod on top. To replicate this, I applied black, Tulip Slick paint directly from the bottle to the top of each stalk and inserted them in foam insulation to let them dry.
For the long, slender leaves, use either thin plastic or art paper. Consulting reference photos, I cut shapes with a point at the top and wider at the bottom. Make them similar, not identical. The slight curve is OK because the leaves naturally bend away from the stalk.
Slick paint works well to attach the leaves to the stalks. I put a small dab of Slick paint on my work surface, in this case, an old piece of tile, and then use tweezers to dip the bottom of the leaf.
Holding the stalk in one hand and the tweezers with the leaf in the other, I place the leaves on the stalk. The Slick paint will hold the leaf in place and takes a few minutes to dry, allowing you time to reposition leaves as they are added.
After attaching the leaves, cut the stalk to the desired length. Always leave a little extra to help placing them in the base.
As I finish each reed, I place it back in the foam insulation to hold it upright while the Slick paint dries.
After the reeds are dry, they can be painted with an airbrush. Use thin paint and low pressure (around 10 psi) so you don’t blow the reeds away while painting!
Here are the finished reeds after painting and planting in the scene. The varying height of the plants helps to make them appear more realistic, and, with several grouped together, they simulate the real plants and can add an interesting element to the scene.