grishnakh - yes that's the one i used. thanks for posting! a friend of mine is huge into heroscape and suggested i take a look.
but if anyone is interested here's my how-to:
1- some covered floral wire and artificial leaves from local craft store.
2- cut a piece of the wire with a wirecutter for the trunk. i hate measuring so i used a thumb length for top branches, a thumb and a half for roots, then just a guess for tree height. use a figure or a previous tree as a guide.
3- use the first piece as a guide to cut 3 or 4 more.
4- twist all trunk parts around each other; after the first couple of twists, you can mix up the twisting so it's not uniform or a regular braid pattern.
5- bend out the roots, the branches; optionally the trunk. also check the balance so it stands upright by bending/twisting the roots.
6- cut leaves that look "about right" size wise.
7- hot glue the branches and attach the leaves, one at a time.
TIP: do a lower branch first so you can overlap the higher leaves on top to cover any gaps.
underside view
Optional: use an extra smaller leaf in case you want/need to cover up any gaps.
all total - about 10 minutes of work. once you have one tree done, it's a lot easier to gauge/estimate lengths and get in a rhythm/assembly line. i think the whole lot of 15 took me about 2 hours and cost about $12 in supplies and i still have a bunch left.