I think it's a mistake to tweak such materials in HDR lighting and/or taking closeup renders. Most of the time, at least in archviz, vegetation is going to be in the background and as such should look convincing when scattered across a wide area and should work with the most simple lighting.
Threads on this subject usually have a trend of showing off nice closeup shots of leaves lit with nice HDR lighting which IMO begs the question, are you actually tweaking a material or just showing off something that works in strictly controlled environment? Also it's extremely easy to get a material to look organic when you use an overcast lighting, but as soon as you introduce bright sunlight to the equation such materials oftentimes break down. My suggestion is to show how your material works in both overcast and sunlit conditions when doing these tests.