MANY families dream of having a tree house in the back garden but few will be as ambitious as this.

Tim Johnson’s lovingly handcrafted structure cost as much as a real house.

It sleeps four, has a fully equipped kitchen, a shower room and even a wood burning stove and it costs from £175 a night to stay in.

Tim’s children Charlie, 13, Ziggy, ten, and Vida, six, are now used to their father’s unusual additions to the campsite they run near Ditchling.

The latest is the wooden treehouse called Piggledy, which cost more than £200,000 to build, required full planning permission and took three years to complete.

It adds to an earlier and slightly smaller luxury treehouse called Higgledy, a London bus and a helicopter on their land.

Tim used to run Brighton Backpackers in Middle Street before moving his family out to the country to set up their luxury campsite.

The latest construction is made almost entirely from recycled materials and locally sourced wood and is lined with sanded scaffolding boards.

He said: “We finished the first tree house last year and have just finished the second.

“They are completely insulated, fully functioning buildings. They have gone through the same building regulations as normal houses.

“I started trying to build it with just me and one carpenter then realised it was going to be a bit more complicated.

“But it is a fantastic experience to be up on the terrace in the canopy of the trees.

“It is a geographically beautiful site. We get a lot of Brighton people and Londoners who want to be in real nature but the advantage of these is you don’t have to sleep under mouldy canvas. It has been three years in construction but we wanted to build it really beautifully using local craftspeople.

“I haven’t even dared to add up just how much it has cost. The first tree house cost more than £200,000. That’s as much as a one-bed flat in Brighton but I know what I’d rather have.”

Tim moved to the site 14 years ago. He said: “We started out with a retro caravan. Then I got a helicopter and a bus. The look on the children’s faces when I drove the bus up the drive was priceless. Now they are used to it and just say ‘oh Dad, what are you doing now?’.”

Tim said the site gained popularity when they featured in a cool camping coffee table book and realised there was a market for “glamping”.

His madcap constructions have drawn the attention of George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces TV show which plans to film part of its next series on the site in the autumn.