Vegetable scarecrow

There is a myth and a fanciful imagining that mandrakes have human-shaped roots. I suppose if you were that way inclined, pareidolia might make you think it was true. However, unless the pest you wish to scare is a mole with X-ray vision and the root is high in relatively heavy elements, perhaps calcified, this is not likely to be useful to you as an agri- or horticulturist.

What we need to do then is to breed a shrub which looks like a human, topiarising it appropriately to increase the resemblance and perhaps also making it smell nasty to a potential crop-purloiner: an upside-down mandrake that produces human screams as the wind blows through its branches, that stinks of citronella or something equally repellent to the relevant entities, maybe a composite entity with epiphytic herbs on its boughs.

The actual species involved would vary according to the climate and conditions, but it could have grass growing on its "head", smellies on its armpits and so on, and maybe dressed in special vegetable vestments.

While we're at it, we need to remedy the problem of all those naked trees and knit them meaty jumpers or something, but that's not for here.