I don't know if it's possible already in Blender, but it would be nice to have explicit control over vertex normals via GUI or Python scripting in order to create foliage like this.
@greevar, Have you tried setting the pivot center for rotation/scaling to "individual origins" That sounds like what you want. Also, the inset/extrude add on works ok for me in 2.6. Are you using the 2.6? This is the latest version of the script. @leilei, That actually sounds really useful. It's not something that I would…
why not just work in a way that wont create them, and you could also write a simple script that selects all faces with >4 sides. besides your just slowing yourself down not useing them, even if your making a mesh that is all quads, it can help speed things up to use ngons here and there and quad it up later by adding edges…