That Tree Is Made of What? (11 Photos)

Christmas trees made of anything but trees

None of these grew in a forest. Fishing towns build theirs from lobster traps and creels, a desert city rounds up tumbleweeds, and a library and a tire shop use what is already on their shelves. Most are built from whatever the place has plenty of.

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🧱 LEGO Tree — By Ryan McNaught in Auckland, New Zealand 🇳🇿

Every needle, candy cane and bauble is a plastic brick, and Santa brought a surfboard. The tree stood in Aotea Square in December 2016, more than 33 feet (10 m) tall and built from more than 500,000 bricks.

💡 Build Fact: Building took more than 1,200 hours. It was led by Ryan McNaught, “The Brickman,” at the time the only LEGO Certified Professional in the southern hemisphere.

🔗 Follow Ryan McNaught on Instagram

📷 Photo and cover crop: Tony Hisgett / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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🧴 Plastic Bottle Tree — Cromer, England, UK 🇬🇧

Hundreds of empty plastic bottles packed into a fishing net, outside Cromer Museum in December 2019. In a seaside town, a net full of bottles makes its own point.

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

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📚 Book Tree — Hanover, New Hampshire, USA 🇺🇸

Books stacked in rings, spines out, until they make a tree inside the Howe Library. Photographed in January 2026.

📷 Photo: Artaxerxes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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🎣 Creel Tree — Stromness, Orkney, Scotland, UK 🇬🇧

Fishing creels, red floats and string lights in Stromness. On top, a crab in place of a topping star.

💡 Float Fact: The floats on the railings nearby are part of it too. The Orkney News wrote in 2025 that they are in memory of local people who have died.

📷 Photo: C1614 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🪨 Slate Tree — Llanberis, Wales, UK 🇬🇧

Roofing slates stacked into a tall, narrow tree at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis, in November 2015. A slate museum with a slate tree: of course.

📷 Photo: Hefin Owen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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🦞 Lobster Trap Tree — Rockland, Maine, USA 🇺🇸

Green lobster traps stacked into a 40-foot cone, buoys for ornaments and a red lobster holding up the star, by the harbor in Rockland. The 2019 tree took 155 traps, more than 100 buoys and 2,500 lights, put up by volunteers.

💡 Zip Tie Fact: In the early years the top third of the tree fell over twice when zip ties broke. The organizers learned the lesson: “Do not take shortcuts on the zip ties.”

📷 Photo and cover crop: Crispins C. Crispian / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🌵 Tumbleweed Tree — Chandler, Arizona, USA 🇺🇸

Under the paint and lights, this tree in Chandler is a pile of desert tumbleweeds, on average 33 feet tall and 18 feet wide at the base. Since 1978 the city’s Parks Department has collected the tumbleweeds.

💡 Fire Fact: The tree has burned seven times since 1957, so over the years the city has added more fire retardant to the paint.

📷 Photo: Peter Bronski (Meiguoren at English Wikipedia) / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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🛟 Buoy Tree — Eastham, Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸

Hundreds of painted lobster buoys stand in a cone on the Eastham Windmill Green on Cape Cod, photographed here in June. It stays up all year as a tribute to James Filliman, an Eastham native who died in 2018.

💡 Backyard Fact: Every Christmas, Filliman built a buoy tree in his own yard with around 200 buoys. After his death, people in town collected buoys and built this permanent one.

📷 Photo: Magpieturtle / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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🦀 Lobster Pot Tree — Wells-next-the-Sea, England, UK 🇬🇧

Pots stacked into a cone, with orange and white floats and a life ring as decorations, on the quay at Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk. Pot trees like this one are “spreading like harbour gossip up and down the coast”.

📷 Photo: R3beccaEbbs / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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🛞 Tire Tree — Orkney, Scotland, UK 🇬🇧

This tree from Iain Laird Tyre Services is tractor tires stacked from biggest to smallest. It stood by a road in Orkney in December 2025.

📷 Photo: C1614 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🪵 Log Tree — Scotney Castle, Kent, England, UK 🇬🇧

Rounds of sawn logs stacked into a cone, cut ends facing out and a star on top, at Scotney Castle in November 2016. From the path it is a Christmas tree; up close it is a very tidy woodpile.

📷 Photo: Michael Garlick / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)