When the Kesharwani family in Jabalpur, India, decided to expand their home back in 1994, they pondered what to do about the giant fig tree growing in their garden. Rather than cut it down, they decided to build a four-storey house around it.

Today, the Kesharwanis’ residence is one of the most stunning sights in Jabalpur – a concrete villa with a giant tree trunk growing through its multiple stories and thick branches coming out through the windows, walls and roof. Yogesh Kesharwani, whose parents built the house 25 years ago, said that the fig tree is about 150 years old but still blossoms into leaves and fruits every year. Even though they have to navigate around its thick trunk when moving through the house, the Kesharwanis have gotten used to it and even grown to consider it a member of the family.

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A Russian pensioner recently made national news headlines after stripping two tall pine trees on his neighbors’ property of all their branches and using them as supports for a wooden tree house. He never asked for permission to do this, instead taking advantage of the fact that they were away on vacation.

Irina Chukanova and her family have been living on a small plot of land near the city of Nizhny Tagil for 10 years, and they’ve never had any problems with their neighbor, Yuri Stepanov. That all changed this spring, when the pensioner started complaining about the two pine trees growing on the Chukanovs’ property, claiming that all the needles and cones ended up on his land, and he was sick of having to clean up the mess. He repeatedly asked his neighbors to cut down the trees, but they were reluctant to do so, and instead promised to come up with a solution in the fall. Only Stepanov apparently got sick of waiting, and decided to take matters into his own hands.

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Joel Allen completed his amazing tree house on Whistler Mountain, in Western Canada, two years ago, but chose to keep it a secret for fear it would be torn down. Now, his secret’s out and the Hemloft has become one of the most talked-about architectural wonders on the Internet.

Hemloft, named after the hemlock tree supporting it, is definitely one of the most charming tree houses I have ever seen, but it’s actually the story behind it that’s most fascinating. Its creator, Joel Allen, was 26 when he decided to quit his job as a software developer and pursue a get-rich quick scheme. That didn’t exactly work out the way he planned, and he soon found himself strapped for cash. Joel found his calling as a carpenter, and one day got the brilliant idea of using his new-found talent to build a wooden tree house on Whistler Mountain, right in the middle of one of the world’s most expensive housing markets. He didn’t have the money for it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

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