People Made of Plants (10 Photos)

October 20, 2026

By Vidar

Figures made of plants

Willow, moss, grass, rice, straw and one patiently trained tree: ten figures built from plants. Some were woven, some were planted, and a few are still growing.

🏹 Spirit of the Medieval Huntress — By Anna & The Willow at Skipton Castle Woods, England 🇬🇧

Anna Cross’s nine-foot willow archer draws her bow beside the path through Skipton Castle Woods. The Woodland Trust commissioned her and The Stalking Horse in 2018 to recall the wood’s past as a larder and hunting ground for Skipton Castle.

💡 Frame Fact: The willow is woven over a hand-forged steel frame made by local blacksmith Adam Crane. Willow does not last forever outdoors, and in 2024 Sylvan Skills rebuilt the frames and rewove both sculptures; this photo shows the original weave.

🔗 Follow Anna & The Willow on Instagram

🌿 Mud Maid — By Sue and Pete Hill at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, England 🇬🇧

The Mud Maid sleeps on the floor of Heligan’s Woodland Walk, her body covered in ivy, with moss creeping over her face. Sister and brother Sue and Pete Hill made her in 1997, and grass, ivy and moss grow and wither on her through the year. The two photos show her in summer and under snow.

💡 Name Fact: She was first planned as a mermaid. According to My Modern Met, the tail was dropped after a member of the restoration team called her a “mud maid.”

More: Mud Maid – Living sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill

🔗 Visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan

🌺 Earth Goddess — By Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Georgia, USA 🇺🇸

About 25 feet tall and covered in roughly 17,000 plants, the Earth Goddess rises from the Cascades Garden and lets water run from her hand. She arrived in May 2013 from Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal in 23 fully planted pieces for the Imaginary Worlds exhibition, and the garden kept her in its permanent collection.

💡 Garden Fact: Her hollow body holds the irrigation system, split into 13 zones so the gardeners can water different parts, such as the fingertips, separately. She is sheared about every two weeks to keep her shape defined.

📷 Photo: Eric Yarnell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🧚 Windfee — By Barbara Jamin Sassmannshausen in Bingen, Germany 🇩🇪

A life-size “wind fairy” woven from willow rods stands by the river in Bingen. The loose ends of her hair and skirt are left sticking out behind her, so she looks as if she is walking into a strong gust.

More: Windfee by Barbara Jamin Sassmannshausen

🌳 A Tree Grown Into a Person — By Pooktre (Peter Cook and Becky Northey)

Nothing here was carved. The tree was shaped as it grew into two legs and two raised arms, and the branches above became the hair. According to the photo’s description, the tree was planted in 1998 and photographed in 2009.

💡 Tree Shaping Fact: In Australia, Peter Cook and Becky Northey refined their own techniques for shaping trees into figures of people, chairs and mirror frames.

📷 Photo: Pooktre (uploaded by Blackash) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

🔗 Visit Pooktre’s website

🌬️ Stillness in Motion — By Olga Ziemska in Orońsko, Poland 🇵🇱

The body is made of stacked branch ends, and the long sweep of willow behind it reads like hair pulled sideways by the wind. Olga Ziemska’s project page dates the work to 2002, at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, made from locally reclaimed willow branches.

💡 Series Fact: It was the first work in her Matka series. “Matka” means “mother” in Polish, and she has since built the figure in other countries from trees that grow native to each place.

🔗 Follow Olga Ziemska on Instagram

🗿 Giant’s Head — By Sue and Pete Hill at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, England 🇬🇧

The Hills’ second figure at Heligan is only a head, half sunk into the woodland with grass for skin and plants for hair. It was built around the root stock of old oaks that were uprooted in the Great Storm of 1990.

💡 Repair Fact: The roots inside eventually rotted, and according to My Modern Met a 2012 renovation gave the head a steel frame. Its hair is crocosmia, which turns it red-haired in summer.

📷 Photo: Daderot / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

👑 A Straw King and Queen — Dülmen, Germany 🇩🇪

Round straw bales for heads and bodies, a red top and a white shirt, a crown and a top hat. This couple stood in a field in Daldrup, part of Dülmen’s Kirchspiel district, in May 2015. The sign beside them names them as the “Königspaar,” Daniela and Thomas: the year’s king and queen of a local Schützenfest, the marksmen’s festival held in many German villages.

📷 Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons (“Dülmen, Kirchspiel, Strohfiguren — 2015 — 5793”, CC BY-SA 4.0)

🚶 Willow Man — By Serena de la Hey near Bridgwater, England 🇬🇧

Drivers on the M5 in Somerset have passed this 40-foot striding man of black willow, standing in a field just south of junction 23, since 2000; this photo shows him in 2011. The first one burned down in an arson attack in May 2001; Serena de la Hey rebuilt him that October, and a moat was dug around him.

💡 Update: By late 2023, Somerset Council described the sculpture as “barely recognisable” and started a feasibility study, funded by National Highways, into repairing him and possibly moving him to a new site. By 2024, little more than his steel frame was left.

📷 Photo: Anthony Parkes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

🌾 Ebisu and Daikokuten — Rice Paddy Art in Inakadate, Japan 🇯🇵

Every line here is a growing rice plant. In 2008 the village of Inakadate planted Ebisu and Daikokuten, two of Japan’s Seven Lucky Gods, using rice varieties whose leaves come up in different colors. Ebisu holds his fish; the house at the edge of the field shows the scale.

💡 Village Fact: Inakadate began its rice paddy art in 1993 to bring the village back to life. The designs are planned on computers, and a 22-meter mock castle tower at the village office lets visitors see the whole picture.

📷 Photo: yawning hunter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)