Why are treehouses suddenly so popular?
We all loved treehouses as kids. They inspire imagination and make us feel safe in a way that no ground space can. It’s a rare kid who didn’t want a treehouse. For years, treehouses were only that — that thing we left behind years ago. Then a kid who wouldn’t let go of that dream named Michael Garnier decided to build a few outside his bed and breakfast in southwestern Oregon in the late 1980s. When he stepped up to a large treehouse, Michael’s creativity led him to create a unique anchoring bolt — known since as the Garnier Limb — to safely carry the greater load. When he offered to rent the treehouse to guests, local building inspectors who had no idea what to make of a tree-borne structure tried to shut Out-n-About’s Treesort down. So began a legal battle, and so began Michael’s work with his friend and engineer Charley Greenwood. The two men developed, tested, refined and proved the load-carrying capacity of the Garnier limb. They also opened up a whole new world of design and c
