When Plants Join In (12 Photos)

October 1, 2026

By Vidar

Street art with living parts

Paint stays where the artist leaves it; plants keep going. In most of these twelve works the living part is the hair, and it grows, blooms or drops its leaves long after the artist has packed up. One giraffe in Utrecht is still waiting for its dinner to climb up the building.

🦒 Hungry Giraffe — By JanIsDeMan in Utrecht, Netherlands 🇳🇱

A giraffe stretches the full height of an apartment building on Briljantlaan in Utrecht’s Hoograven district, its head turned toward the climbing plants on the next wall. JanIsDeMan explains the plan on his site: the real greenery should grow until it reaches the giraffe’s mouth, turning the painting into a slow meal.

💡 Nerd Fact: JanIsDeMan didn’t wait for nature: “I was a bit impatient so I drew a few of the plants already,” he told Barbara Picci. In early 2024, a gardener for the housing corporation Woonin pulled out the ivy, which wasn’t gripping the steel wires, and clematis went in instead.

📂 Artwork File · Sourced factsHungry GiraffeJanIsDeMan · 2023 · Hoograven, UtrechtSeven storeys (NOS)Vertical garden (artist)Some leaves are painted1The artist says a vertical garden beside the wall should, in a few years, grow enough for plants to reach the giraffe’s mouth.JanIsDeMan2According to NOS, in March 2024 a gardener working for the housing corporation removed the ivy and planted a clematis instead.NOS202316 SepBlog photos, newly painted20246 MarIvy removed the day before20247 MarNOS: clematis instead202528 JunStreet Art Cities photo20268 FebCommons photo from the crossing202612 AugNamed in Zwolle giraffe entry202622 SepMarked “last seen”Read the full file →

More: 8 Happy 3D Artworks by Jan Is De Man That Will Make You Smile

🔗 Visit JanIsDeMan’s website

🛏️ Cobija de plantas — By El Decertor in Imbabura, Ecuador 🇪🇨

A child sleeps on a white pillow next to a stuffed toy, and the real hedge along the top of the wall tucks in the rest of the body like a thick green blanket. That is also the title: El Decertor posted the mural as Cobija de plantas (Plant Blanket), painted in Imbabura for the Numu Festival.

💡 Artist Fact: El Decertor is Daniel Cortez from Lima, Peru. Numu stands for Nuevo Mural (New Mural), a festival held in Antonio Ante in Imbabura.

More: By El Decertor – In Imbabura, Ecuador (2 Photos)

🔗 Follow El Decertor on Instagram

🌺 Bougainvillea Shades — In Pondicherry, India 🇮🇳

The painter gave her blue sunglasses, gold hoops and red lips; the bougainvillea growing over the wall gave her the magenta hair, piled high above the sunglasses. The house is on Petit Canal Street in Pondicherry.

💡 Plant Fact: The magenta parts are not really petals. Bougainvillea’s true flowers are small and inconspicuous, and the color comes from the papery bracts around them, Britannica explains.

📷 Photo: Kanthan on Instagram

🤲 Family Tree — By Falko One in Riebeek West, South Africa 🇿🇦

The trunk and the bush are real. Falko One painted the branches between them as long brown arms, so the tree seems to reach across the crumbling wall toward the small hands sprouting near the bush. Behind the wall, a stepped gable breaks off against the blue sky.

💡 Artist Fact: Riebeek West was the first stop of Once Upon a Town, Falko One’s 2010 trip from Cape Town to paint houses in low-income communities in small towns across South Africa. In December 2020 he returned for his debut solo exhibition, AFTER LIFE, with Solo Studios.

🔗 Follow Falko One on Instagram

🏛️ Please Do Not Touch — By Michael Pederson

A dandelion gone to seed grows out of the bottom of a brick wall, and Michael Pederson treats it like a museum exhibit: two tiny silver posts, a rope between them and a sign that reads PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. The stem rises well above the rope, and the seed head sits level with the sign.

💡 Artist Fact: Pederson is a Sydney native. In a feature on artists who stretch the idea of street art, Artsy described him this way: he “might install a museum-style velvet rope and a ‘Please Do Not Touch’ sign before a single dandelion.”

More: Clever Art By Michael Pederson (17 Photos)

🔗 Visit Michael Pederson’s website

💚 Diosa de la Naturaleza — By SFHIR in Málaga, Spain 🇪🇸

The face and the hand holding a heart of leaves are painted; the hair is a real tree, with a climbing plant trailing down the right side. SFHIR described this goddess in 2019 as one part of a longer mural about medicine and Málaga culture at the Hospital HLA El Ángel.

More: Turning Walls into Stories! 6 Murals by SFHIR

🔗 Visit SFHIR’s website

🪨 Grass-Haired Rock — By Tom Bob

A garden boulder gets big round eyes, pink cheeks and a wide grin, and the tall ornamental grass planted behind it turns into a bushy mop. Pink flowers bloom right under the smile.

💡 Artist Fact: New Bedford-born Tom Bob sketches first, cuts stencils from the drawings and then spray-paints the image, he told The New Bedford Light. In Brooklyn he turned a boulder into a wedge of cheese: “I walked by it a million times — and then I saw it as a piece of cheese.”

More: Creative Genius Tom Bob (33 Photos)

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🌿 Ivy Afro — By Vinie

Vinie paints the face, the arm and the bracelets, and a real ivy bush does the rest. The girl glances up at all that green as if she is still making up her mind about the new hairstyle. When Vinie shared the piece in 2014, her caption read simply “I love London.”

💡 Artist Fact: Vinie started out painting graffiti in Toulouse and moved to Paris in 2007. Ivy hair is a recurring trick: when a wall allows it, she draws her character around a clump of ivy that becomes the hair.

More: Vinie’s Stunning Murals (25 Photos)

🔗 Follow Vinie on Instagram

🌰 A Chestnut Tree for Kora — By Bruno Althamer in Warsaw, Poland 🇵🇱

Four photos of the same wall. The painted face of the rock singer Kora stays put, while the horse chestnut in front of it blossoms, fills out, turns brown and drops its leaves. “The tree became part of the work,” the artist told RMF FM when the mural was unveiled behind Branicki Palace on Nowy Świat in January 2019.

💡 Nerd Fact: The portrait was painted for Kobiety na mury (Women on the Walls), a campaign run by the magazine Wysokie Obcasy. Kora, who sang with Maanam, had died the year before. The artist, son of the sculptor Paweł Althamer, has since changed his surname to Neuhamer.

📂 Artwork File · Sourced factsMural of KoraBruno Althamer (Neuhamer) · 2019 · Nowy Świat, WarsawHer hair is a real chestnutKobiety na mury campaignTagged in 2019 and 20261The horse chestnut in front is part of the work: painted branches lead into the real tree, so the mural changes with the seasons.RMF FM2Her face was daubed in October 2019, and in March 2026 a black tag was sprayed across her lower face.Whitemad201917 JanCommons photo, unveiling day201917 JanPAP: unveiled201917 FebCommons photo, with plaque201912 OctViva!: face daubed2020DecBlog photos202428 MayCommons, after the bloom202621 MarPhotos: tag on face202626 MarNasze Miasto gallery202629 MarTVN Warszawa photos20266 AprRepair plan: overpaintRead the full file →

🔗 Visit Bruno Neuhamer’s website

🍃 Tara — By Fauxreel in Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦

Only the eyes, nose, lips and a few pale shapes sit on the gray concrete. The vines hanging over the top of the wall fall exactly where the hair should be and spill down on both sides of the face. Fauxreel’s own photo names the portrait Tara, from his 2010 series Face of the City.

💡 Artist Fact: Fauxreel is Toronto-born artist Dan Bergeron. Writing about the series on Flickr, he says it pairs the worn surfaces of cities with the familiar human face, and finds beauty in “the scars, wrinkles and blemishes of places we live and people we meet.”

🔗 Visit Fauxreel’s website

🌳 Comb and Crown — By Nuxuno Xän in Fort-de-France, Martinique 🇲🇶

A grinning man in black and white holds a comb to the side of his head, and the tree growing behind the wall supplies what he is combing. His head sits just below the top of the wall, so the leaves fall right where a big head of curls would be.

📷 Photo: Rosali Rodrigues

More: By Nuxuno Xän – In Fort De France, Martinique

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🪴 OSolTerrae — By Fin DAC in Portland, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸

Everything is paint except the headdress, a living wall of plants set into SolTerra’s headquarters at SE 9th Avenue and Division Street. Fin DAC named the 70-foot mural OSolTerrae, or Woman-Sun-Earth, the Business Tribune reported after he finished it in 2017.

💡 Nerd Fact: The blue bird on her shoulder is Cuba’s national bird, painted for the Cuban restaurant planned for the ground floor. The planters work like felt pockets, the plants are watered from the tap, and the painting took Fin DAC 12 days in August 2017.

🔗 Follow Fin DAC on Instagram