Students will soon be studying biology in the biosphere when the St. George’s tree house has its grand opening April 9.

The opening, which will feature a cookout and live music around the tree house, is in celebration of several years of work.

The year was 2010 when Mrs. Sarah Robertson approached her honors geometry class with a proposition for creating a treehouse on campus.

In 2012, when the class of 2018, who are now current sophomores, were in eighth grade, they drew the first blueprints for the treehouse, which stands behind the baseball fields.

“We used trigonometry, did a bunch of measurements and drew blueprints,” Mrs. Robertson said. “It’s been in Mr. Gorham’s hands ever since.”

Chaplain Mr. Brendan Gorham has kept up with the educational value for the treehouse by ensuring that students learn history while working on the project.

“We could have [gotten] some construction team to do it, but instead, we had all the students bring up all the wood,” Mr. Gorham said about the early construction of the treehouse. “We had students pulling beams across the river like they did in river traffic, and we had a pulley system, which we used to teach them about Archimedes and the Greeks’ early use of pulleys.”

All the foundation was in place two years ago, but Mr. Gorham suggested some changes to the base.

“The trees were healthy, they could handle it, but eventually they were going to die,” Mr. Gorham said. “We wanted it to last longer, make it safer.”

The treehouse saw the most progress with the combined efforts of alumni Josh Walker and Kelsey Pepper. They dedicated two or three hours each week to working on the treehouse, although it was not that easy.

“We got things like lumber and the generator stuck in the mud, replaced the interior support beams and ran out of nails,” Walker said.

After five years of work, the treehouse has finally entered its final stages of construction.

“This year, we are finishing it. We’re getting the railing up, and we’re boxing it in to make it secure,” Mr. Gorham said.

Classes have already started to use the treehouse. High school English teacher Heidi Rubín took students on an excursion into the woods to perform scenes of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Mr. Gorham has reached out to upper school students for assistance to complete the treehouse. He is looking for volunteers on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays. If interested, contact Mr. Gorham at [email protected].