As I work on my Ancient Greek mercenary skirmish game, Bronze Shield Silver Coin, I knew that cypress trees would be necessary to make an immersive Greek table to play on! I didn't find any tutorials that I loved so I set about experimenting. To my surprise I found a way to make great looking trees with no flock needed, and pennies worth of supplies.

I started by hot gluing some 1/4" dowels onto 3mm "sintra" board bases (it's a pvc product commonly used in sign making, can be cut with a craft knife and doesn't warp!).
I then used some miliput to further reinforce the dowel.

Working in strips, I took aluminum foil and, after crumpling it, hot glued it piece by piece onto the "trunk", shaping it as I went.
I did my normal basing techniques of PVA glue, small rocks, and sand.

Next I primed the trees with rattle-can, brown for the bases and a dark green for the leaves. You may need multiple coats from different angles to hit all the exposed shiny foil.

I slapped on some brown and khaki colors on the bases, working up to a light drybrush of cream.

Then did a drybrush of a yellow-green on the leaves.
And that's it! Very quick and easy cypress trees that can be used in any Mediterranean environment.