Dan the TreeNet Man

Who I Am

I'm Dan, and I build TreeNets. I've spent years working outdoors with rope and trees, and somewhere along the way it became the only thing I wanted to do. These days I travel around the UK weaving nets in gardens, school grounds, nursery gardens and woodland clearings — and teaching other people how to do it properly.

What I Do

Each net is designed for its own space. I visit, look at the trees, work out what the space wants to be, then hand-weave and tension the net on site. Nothing arrives flat-packed. Alongside installations I run practical courses for tree surgeons, outdoor educators, landscapers and makers who want to add TreeNets to what they do.

Why I Started

I kept seeing gardens and school grounds with beautiful mature trees and nothing to do in them — and plastic play equipment dropped into spaces that deserved better. A net felt like the honest answer: quiet, natural, endlessly used, and something that works with the trees rather than against them. The first one I built was for my own family. It never stopped being used, so I built another, then another.

Word spread through friends, then schools, then nurseries and forest schools, and what started as weekend projects became full-time work. Today I travel across the UK designing and weaving nets on site, and teaching other people to do the same.

My Approach

Specialist work, done slowly and carefully. I only build nets, so all my attention goes on the things that matter: choosing the right anchor trees, spreading load kindly across bark, getting the sag and height right for the people using it, and finishing edges so they feel good in the hand. I'd rather turn a job down than rig something I'm not confident in.