In which country will you find a guitar made from over 7,000 trees?

Located in the fertile agricultural region of Argentina’s ‘Pampas’ is a guitar shaped forest made up of over 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees. At over a kilometer in length (2/3 of a mile) the guitar shaped forest is quite visible for passing planes and satellites above. While its sheer size and scale is impressive as a piece of land art, the story of how it came to be is even more touching.

The guitar forest was planted by a farmer named Pedro Martin Ureta. Now 71-years old, it was he and his four children that planted every individual tree decades ago. The inspiration came from Pedro’s wife, Graciela Yraizoz, who was flying in a plane over Pampa one day and noticed a farm, that through a fluke of topography, looked a bit like a milking pail. Graciela proclaimed that they should do one better and make a giant guitar on their farm, as she always loved the instrument.

Then one day in 1977 she suddenly collapsed. She had suffered from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm and died shortly thereafter, carrying what would have been the family’s fifth child. A couple years later, Pedro decided to honour his late wife’s wishes and create the guitar shaped forest she had always dreamed of.