Among the Pacific Northwest’s Douglas firs, Ponderosa pines, and Sitka spruce, arboreal architecture abounds. It’s no wonder, then, that our region counts two recognized treehouse specialists. Think of them as the mogul and the maverick. 

The mogul is Pete Nelson, author of several treehouse books and star of the TV series Treehouse Masters, which ran for 11 seasons and included such ambitious efforts as a “climb-in” movie theater and a treetop chapel in Texas. Nelson Treehouse, his company based 25 miles east of Seattle, has designed more than 350 custom treehouses, warm and woodsy and clean-lined.

The maverick, meanwhile, is Michael Garnier, a kind of Steve Jobs to Nelson’s Bill Gates. Garnier also designs custom treehouses, and costarred in a TV show, The Treehouse Guys. (Decidedly less glitzy, it aired for three seasons and featured more esoteric designs.) But really, he’s all about holding court from his Out ’n’ About Treesort, outside Cave Junction in Southern Oregon. A five-hour drive from Portland near the California border, it’s a veritable Ewok village of funky, curvy designs, with zip lines, rope swings, and horseback rides to extend the summer-camp vibes.

Dwell magazine houses in the trees these are not. Garnier’s structures are playful, insistently idiosyncratic—the backyard tree forts of your childhood dreams, only with Wi-Fi and (in at least a few of them) indoor plumbing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Treesort has its roots in a treehouse Garnier says he built back in the late ’70s or early ’80s for his five children, in a century-old oak on his 36-acre plot of land. “I kept looking at it and thinking what I would build if I had the time and money,” says Garnier, now 75. So in 1990, he reimagined the “funky” structure as a bed-and-breakfast treehouse. It remains rentable today as the Peacock Perch.

Born and raised in the declining Rust Belt town of Gary, Indiana, Garnier studied engineering in college before being drafted into the army. He avoided the jungles of Vietnam (“I didn’t want to be a pawn,” he says) by working as a medic and then as a smoke jumper, and settled near Cave Junction in 1973. As he added treehouses to his property, his engineering knowledge came in handy. He helped create a robust metal bolt now marketed as the Garnier limb, which proved an industry game changer. Whereas nails are damaging to trees and can make for flimsy structures, the Garnier limb is substantially sturdier and accepted by trees, which often grow new bark around it. “It’s sort of giving the tree a prosthetic,” says Garnier, who sells these limbs worldwide. “Pete Nelson’s a better designer than I am, but I’m a better engineer.”

Jake Jacob, a longtime friend and Treehouse Guys costar, says he refers to Garnier as King Michael. (Garnier and King Charles III also happen to share a birthday.) Garnier, Jacob says, is “a pioneering fella, but he can be stubborn as hell. [He’s] one of those creative types where he has a vision in his head and wants to do it his way.”

That stubbornness has served Garnier well. In the ’90s, he successfully beat Josephine County bureaucrats who had ordered him to stop running lodgings, and even to demolish the treehouses at Out ’n’ About altogether, due to lack of code compliance. After a near-decade-long battle, Garnier got the county to relent, in part by packing scores of friends and family into one treehouse to prove its structural soundness. “Sixty-six people, two dogs, a cat—and we’re not sure if the hummingbird landed or not,” he jokes. 

Today, Out ’n’ About counts 15 treehouse rentals, among them the Treezebo, the Serendipitree, and the Elementree. (Over the years, Garnier has developed quite the treeminology.) Reservations open at the beginning of each year and fill up fast, especially for summer weekends.

“That resort is awesome,” says Daniel Ash, an architect with Nelson Treehouse. “It’s just visibly fun, and it puts you out of your comfort zone in a way that’s hard to achieve, in a way that is essential to a treehouse experience.”

On a second property, 10 miles from the Treesort, Garnier has built a cannabis-friendly offshoot, whose three treehouses include the USS Mary Jane, a sailboat suspended 35 feet off the ground. Beyond the fun and haze, Out ’n’ About also hosts the annual World Treehouse Conference, where experienced builders from all over the world, Nelson among them, gather to share lessons and explore new ideas.

“A key part of the conference every year is the arboreal aspect,” Jacob says. “Understanding how a tree works biologically and mechanically is an essential component to being a successful treehouse builder.”

Between off-grid aeries and high-design roosts, Garnier has more competition than ever. But King Michael isn’t concerned. “My style is different than a lot of those guys,” he says. “I’m into a more real, treehouse-y treehouse: one that fits the tree.”