Grandkids treehouse

The first conversation wasn't about a structure. It was about time - whether a garden in Oxford could become the reason the grandchildren came over, and the reason they stayed outside once they had. Their grandparents were clear about that when they first rang us. They weren't after a feature for the lawn. They wanted somewhere the children would ask to go, and would bring their friends to.

Scale followed intention. What we built runs roughly forty-five metres through the trees and sits about ten metres above the grass. A treehouse. Decks. Four bridges. A hammock bridge that sags in a way the children found funny before they found it useful. Double zip wires, side by side, because racing matters more than riding. Most people assume the difficulty in a build like this is the treehouse itself. It isn't. The hard part is the space between things - the aerial connectors, the angle at which one bridge arrives at a deck and the next one leaves it, the sequence that keeps a child moving without having to climb down and start again. We set a lot of that out in the canopy rather than on a drawing board, working off ropes and harnesses, reading the trees as we went.

Will they use it? That was the question underneath everything the grandparents asked, though I don't think they ever put it in those words. Their wish-list had been short and entirely about behaviour - somewhere the grandchildren would want to be, with their friends, often. The children were over as soon as we were off site. Then again. Then again after that. I've built things that photograph better than this one. None of them answered a brief quite so plainly. Whether it still pulls them out there when they're teenagers, I don't know. Ask me in ten years.