Hi guys, 
I have posted a couple of times in the fourm and still consider myself quite new since between playing my guitar, engineering and vue modelling I haven't been able to spend a whole lot of time with vue. I am trying to make time and learn vue. 

I am looking at making a scene where I want the backdrop to be rich golden sand (typical of mid eastern desert) and in the middle of it all a palm tree. and perhaps some water. Maybe use fancy things to model the leaves on the tree, maybe unrealistic objects like boats, or other things rather than leaves. 

Can some one guide me as to how can I start to model a rich desert terrain, and secondly how to go about changing leaves to other objects and populating the tree with it in a realistic order. 

I would much appreciate anyone's step by step guidance or links that might help me with this scene. 

thanks