Creating a forest then wrapping it into a Blueprint

Not sure of the best way.

While there should probably be an automated way of some sort…

You can actually do a simple bluetility script, loop through the emements of foliage and add a mesh into an hirerchical static mesh component with the same transform.
I’d set it up in groups of 100 at a time, prevent loop limit cut-offs.

Adding an actor blueprint wthe the component is probably yout best bet.