Terrain - Building an Oasis

My next project - a model an oasis for our wargames set in North Africa and the Levant including a water basin, water channels and of course showing it´s agricultural use:

Overview of my Oasis.

I was not aiming for 100% accuracy of detail, for example in terms of the plants depicted.
On the one hand, terrain for wargames has to be reasonably robust, which means that many techniques from diorama modelling cannot be implemented, and on the other hand, the scale itself sets its limits when it comes to realising it in the model.
The main thing for me was the modelling of the different levels/storeys into which the cultivation of the different types of fruit and vegetables in an oasis are divided.

Schematic illustration of the layers of an oasis

The inhabitants of the oasis developed a three-layer farming system: The tall date palms sheltered shorter trees, and below these trees grew even smaller shrubs and plants.

Date palms are widespread and there were grapevines, pomegranate, and fig trees. Also found here are annuals, including lentils and cereals but also simple grasses, which are needed as fodder for the cattle (mostly goats).

And before I get to the photos of the terrain pieces I built, one more note:
I am aware that the use of wooden buckets for drawing water in oases was the exception rather than the rule and that bags made of goatskin were used in the majority of cases.

In my example, the bucket simply arrived at the oasis with a caravan and was exchanged for dates etc. - which is quite plausible if you look at the following drawing of an oasis near Suez from the 19th century:

And here are completed terrain pieces representing my version of an Oasis that is very far from perfect.

Palms are cheap China plastic ones completely repainted - I will post a link to the WiP post at the end of this one:

Well, water basin and wooden water crane - a housing for a diesel pump will be added later to the platform next to the well.

The central water distributor and 2 seperate water channels

Date palms provide shade for the underlying fields of fruit ...

pumkins ...

vegetables and even just gras to fodder the cattle.

and some additional bases with more Date palms to fill gaps.

There will be follow more bases over time but together with all my palms I finished over the last year I will be fine for now 😉

Some more detail shots of the pieces:

And a few shots with 28mm and 15mm miniatures for size comparison:

Information and pictures of the WiP stage can be found in this post:

https://utgaards-blog.blogspot.com/2025/06/terrain-work-in-progress-constructings.html