Asheville Custom Tree House Builder Site Selection Spotlight: Tree Configuration
If you read our last two posts, you're starting to consider how to select great trees for your treehouse based on tree size and type. But how many of these nice-sized trees will you need? What's important about their positions in relationship to each other? We’re glad you asked.
In our culture, because we're surrounded by conventional homes, we tend to get used to the idea of first planning a building on paper or in our heads. In our drawing or our imagination, we include in it everything we want. Then, the next step seems perfectly logical: we find a site and get the builders to manipulate its natural elements to suit our design. We flatten the hills out, we build a retaining wall. We make it work.
So, it might take a minute to shift your thinking in order to consider building a treehouse. Instead of first planning your project and designing it, and then making the site match that plan, the living trees you're building in require something very different. The order is reversed. You'll want to first find the right site, the right trees. The spot you find on your property may look quite a bit different than what you envisioned when you decided you wanted a treehouse. On the location that emerges as having all of the good qualities of a treehouse site, the trees themselves and their relationship with each other will both (1) tell us how large your treehouse can be and (2) show us some important aspects of the design of the structure.
In other words, more than any other structure people build, a treehouse is actually a relationship between human beings and nature. World Treehouses’ co-owner Erin Everett says, “We’re looking for trees that play together well. When we find a site with the right trees in the right configuration, and it’s a lovely spot, that’s a golden moment. We spend time there, getting a feel for the treehouse that the trees are showing us can be created in their branches.”
We mean it when we say that the trees determine the design of our treehouses!
Now that you've shifted your mindset toward planning, can you find on your property a set of healthy, mature hardwood trees that are about two feet in diameter at chest height? Do they seem spaced far enough apart to build a foundation for a structure there? Keep in mind that tree distance can range from 12-30 feet. It can take a bit of sleuth work, but it’s fun! Maybe you can even find an alternative location as well (options are good).
Enjoy your trek, and stay tuned for more tips on site selection.
Once you’ve found your ideal trees, World Treehouses of Asheville, NC’s skilled team can build you a one-of-a-kind treehouse or other tree project for living, gathering, playing, meditating, and connecting with nature. Our projects are true, unique and custom tree-attached treehouses, which offer their inhabitants an experience like no other. If you’d like to discuss a treehouse project on your land, contact us or click the button below. Or subscribe to our newsletter to inspire your treehouse dreaming.