I think she sees it as a big doll house village. Scenery can be done so many different ways it was difficult to decide which appealed to us most. My wife and I were inspired by Ron King's Erie layout in fall colors and decided to do the same on ours. However, the end result is worth the extra effort. The colors make the layout look alive, like there is even something happening to the trees as well.
Trees are probably the most undesirable task of all when it comes to doing scenery.
It takes us about a month to make a batch of trees and only about an hour or two to use them up. Scenery can make a dramatic first impression on a layout. Soon you will be buying a macro focus lens for your camera to capture all the detail. For track planning I use Cadkey Software on a computer. I have used this software package for about 15 years in the mechanical design of tooling and am familiar with it.