There is a good chance that this picture is the world’s largest image. The giant emblem of the Polish state in the form of a crowned eagle, visible only from a bird’s eye view, has been created in the Lipusz Forest District in Poland.
In order to create this work, 100,000 trees were planted over 10 hectares of land. It took three thousand people, including 1,200 scouts, to carry the work, with nearly 200 foresters watching over their safety. They planted 23,000 birch saplings to create eagle feathers, 400 larch trees to create the crown and talons, and 67,000 pine trees to create the background.
A forest sculpture in Lipusz
The rich variety of trees ensures that the “Forest Eagle,” as it has been named, will be visible. According to foresters, the birch trees are key, as their leaves in the spring are brighter and feature a juicier green, which will stand out against the pine. In summer, the green of birch leaves will become even more intense. Then when the trees lose their foliage in late autumn and winter, the outline of the eagle will be brought out against the dark ground by the white birch trunks. As you can see, they thought of everything.
The “Forest Eagle” will be a spectacular sight when the trees mature and change colors according to the cycle of the seasons. The project has been submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records, and the final decision on its inclusion in the book will be made when the Eagle, which measures 99,898.26 square meters, is fully formed. The creators took great care to ensure that the tree species planted during the works conformed to the plan by requiring an independent specialist to oversee, as well as two witnesses in attendance at all times.
A 100-year celebration
The “Forest Eagle” dendroglyph was created in 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Poland’s independence as well as to commemorate other tragic events in Polish history. It was created in Pomerania at the site of the epicenter of a hurricane that ravaged Kashubia (Pomerania) in 2017 and destroyed more than 2 million cubic meters of trees in the Lipusz municipality alone.
When the dust settled after the hurricane, the boy scouts and girl scouts of the Gdańsk ZHP (Polish Scouting Association) Chapter decided to restore the destroyed stand of trees and add a symbolic dimension to their work to celebrate Polish Independence Day.
However, the “Forest Eagle” is not the only monumental work of this kind in Poland. In 2011, two fish were created on the Polish-Ukrainian border. The several-hundred-meter-long forms in the shape of water creatures were plowed with tractors and sown with phacelia seeds (a purple-flowering plant). Half on the Polish side and half on the Ukrainian side. The artwork was created at the initiative of artist Jarosław Koziar on the occasion of Lublin’s Land Art Festival and bears the meaningful name “Free flow.”
