When Nature Become Art (9 Photos)

July 30, 2026

By Vidar

The artwork does not stop at the edge.

A monumental figure frames living trees. A cardinal is assembled from woodland finds. Stone circles meet the tide, while real plants become hair and crowns. In these twelve works, the world around the artist becomes part of the design.

More: See 40 More Ways Art Meets Nature

🌳 “Hallow” — By Daniel Popper, formerly shown at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, USA 🇺🇸

Hallow was a 26-foot figure beside Meadow Lake, one of five original works in Human+Nature at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle. The exhibition ran from May 2021 through February 2023, and the walk-through opening framed real trees and changing light.

💡 Arboretum Nerd Fact: The Morton Arboretum was founded in 1922 by Joy Morton, whose father, J. Sterling Morton, originated Arbor Day in Nebraska in 1872.

More: See Hallow From Every Angle (5 Photos)

🔗 Visit Daniel Popper’s website

❤️ “Male Cardinal” — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner in Hertfordshire, England 🇬🇧

Hannah Bullen-Ryner assembled Male Cardinal directly on the woodland floor from berries, petals, twigs, and other tiny natural materials. She said the bird was unplanned and that she used every red scrap stored in her coconut bowls. Her earth art uses locally found materials and no permanent fixings, so the photograph is the lasting record of a temporary work.

💡 Bird Nerd Fact: The red plumage of a Northern Cardinal is produced by carotenoid pigments. Birds obtain these compounds by eating plants or animals that have eaten plants.

More: See 18 Ephemeral Artworks by Hannah Bullen-Ryner

🔗 Follow Hannah Bullen-Ryner on Instagram

🌿 “OSolTerrae” — By Fin DAC in Portland, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸

Fin DAC waited for the greenery to grow in before sharing the finished work. In his own post about the mural, he says OSolTerrae was painted for SolTerra and incorporates around 1,000 live plants in a patented living-wall design at 959 SE Division Street. The planted headdress continued to grow after the paint dried.

💡 Botany Nerd Fact: Living walls and green facades are technically different systems: living-wall plants are mounted onto a wall, whereas green-facade plants grow directly against it. Living walls generally provide greater coverage and plant diversity, although irrigation is a common technical challenge.

More: See the Mural That Needed Living Plants to Finish It

🔗 Follow Fin DAC on Instagram

🌀 “Augere” — By Jon Foreman at Druidston, Wales 🇬🇧

Jon Foreman identifies the work as Augere, created at Druidston in 2025. He arranged beach stones into expanding circles on wet sand, leaving the work exposed to the returning tide.

💡 Geology Nerd Fact: Pembrokeshire Coast’s geodiversity was one of the deciding factors in its designation as a national park in 1952. Around 40 percent of the coastline contains geological features protected as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

More: See Jon Foreman Turn Beaches Into Geometry (12 Photos)

🔗 Follow Jon Foreman on Instagram

❤️ “Amor Bonito” — By Alter OS in Mexico City, Mexico 🇲🇽

Two painted children kneel on opposite sides of a living trunk, placing the real tree exactly where their attention meets. The wall supplies the figures; the tree gives the scene its scale and depth.

💡 Civic Design Nerd Fact: Alter OS identified Amor Bonito as a Senderos work. Mexico City’s Senderos Seguros program combines murals with lighting, security cameras, and other public-space improvements intended to make routes safer, especially for women and girls.

More: See Both Views of “Amor Bonito” (2 Photos)

🔗 Follow Alter OS on Instagram

🌲 “FOR(R)EST” — By AÉRO in Saint-Brieuc, France 🇫🇷

Created for the 2021 Just Do Paint Festival, FOR(R)EST places a grayscale portrait and stag inside a dense woodland scene. The real trees in front of the wall extend the same vertical lines, making it hard to see exactly where the mural ends.

💡 Technique Nerd Fact: AÉRO works exclusively with aerosol, including on canvas, and calls the resulting style “insprayssionnime”—impressionism made with spray paint.

More: Step Into AÉRO’s FOR(R)EST

🔗 Follow AÉRO on Instagram

🌺 “Flora” — By OG Millie & Floratorium at Ampia Rooftop in New York City, USA 🇺🇸

OG Millie described this as a spring collaboration, while Floratorium introduced the figure as Flora, goddess of flowers and beauty. OG Millie painted the portrait and Floratorium built the three-dimensional floral crown at Ampia Rooftop, 100 Broad Street.

💡 Classical Nerd Fact: The Floralia was celebrated in late April and early May in ancient Rome. The Met notes that some medieval female personifications of spring may have drawn on Flora and the processions connected with her festival.

More: See the Flower Crown Grow Beyond the Wall

🔗 Follow OG Millie on Instagram and Floratorium on Instagram

💚 “Petite cueilleuse” — By Ben Caillous in Argelès-sur-Mer, France 🇫🇷

Painted in June 2023 for Argelès-sur-Mer’s Urb’Art program, the mural is catalogued as Petite cueilleuse. At Allée de la Tolérance, a real orange tree completed the young picker’s painted hair. A new Urb’Art mural replaced it in 2025, so this photograph preserves the earlier intervention.

💡 Animation Nerd Fact: Ben Caillous studied animation before turning increasingly to large-scale murals. His earlier publications include the graphic novel SAM and the travel sketchbook Instants Népalais.

More: See the Full Mural Where the Tree Becomes Hair

🔗 Follow Ben Caillous on Instagram

🎸 Estancia La Guitarra — Created by Pedro Ureta and his children near General Levalle, Argentina 🇦🇷

Graciela Yraizoz had imagined a guitar-shaped planting, and after her death Pedro Ureta and their children began planting it in 1979. NASA documents more than 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees stretching nearly a kilometer across the farm. The full design is visible only from above at Estancia La Guitarra.

💡 Satellite Nerd Fact: NASA’s published image of the forest was recorded on November 2, 2007, by ASTER aboard the Terra satellite. The false-color composite combined red, green, and near-infrared light.

More: See the Forest Guitar From Above

📷 Follow photographer Marco Guoli on Instagram

☁️ “In the Sky” — By Seth Globepainter in Le Port, Réunion Island, France 🇫🇷

In the Sky is documented as a 2015 work in Le Port, Réunion Island. Seth Globepainter’s child pulls the building open like a blue curtain while the real tree anchors the scene below, turning the facade into a glimpse of another place.

💡 Geography Nerd Fact: Réunion is one of the European Union’s nine outermost regions. The classification covers territories of France, Portugal, and Spain that are geographically very distant from continental Europe.

More: See 34 Murals by Seth Globepainter

🔗 Follow Seth Globepainter on Instagram

🐻 “Forest Guardian” — By Bozik in Miass, Russia 🇷🇺

In his post about Forest Guardian, Bozik describes the bear as a keeper of the forest whose body carries a tree of life, roots, mushrooms, insects, and a walking family. The 540-square-meter mural at 33 Gotvalda Street took eight days and around 80,000 sprayed dots and strokes. Photo by @desevenq.

💡 Mineral Nerd Fact: The Ilmensky Mountains within the administrative territory of Miass are noted for rare-metal and semiprecious mineralization. Their pegmatites include topaz, beryl, phenacite, and tourmaline.

More: See the 12-Story Forest Guardian

🔗 Follow Bozik on Instagram