Our Treehouse Projects Buckinghamshire
Two rooms linked by a rope bridge in a sloping piece of woodland, built for a family who wanted their garden to feel like an adventure. Difficult access and soft ground shaped almost every decision.
The brief
Parents of two, keen walkers, with a strip of woodland at the bottom of their garden that nobody ever used. They wanted a reason to be out there: a treehouse for the children, with room inside for the adults to sit with a coffee and watch.
The tree
A mix of beech and sycamore. The beech were tall and healthy but shallow rooted, so we kept loads well away from their root plates. One sycamore was strong enough to take part of the weight of the smaller room.
The site
A sloping woodland strip near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, around eighty metres from the nearest point a van could reach, with soft ground that held water through the winter.
The challenge
Getting everything in, and keeping it level on a slope of wet ground. We moved materials by hand and with a tracked carrier, and used screw piles set to different depths so each stilt landed exactly where the design needed it, with nothing dug and nothing poured.
The build
The main room stands on stilts. The smaller room is partly carried by the sycamore and partly on stilts, with room left around the trunk for growth. A rope bridge links the two. Cedar shingles, larch cladding, and a slide down the slope for the quickest way home.
The result
The woodland that nobody used is now where the family spends most weekends. The bridge was the children's idea, and it is still their favourite part.
