We wanted to create a space where you could sit with living ideas and with other people who care about them too.
A place to listen, wonder, ask questions, follow a thought a little further, and have the kinds of conversations that are hard to fit into ordinary days.
The Hedgerow is a one-day Charlotte Mason gathering in Hudson, Wisconsin. There will be teaching and breakout sessions, books and nature, good food, beautiful things, and plenty of time to talk.
But more than anything, we hope it's a day with room in it. Room to think. Room to notice. Room to meet someone new or finally sit across the table from someone you've only known online. Room to encounter an idea and not have to rush immediately on to the next thing.
Charlotte Mason wrote that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. The Hedgerow is a place to spend a day in the company of that life.
ABOUT THE HEDGEROW
Hedgerows have long marked the edges of fields and roads, but a good hedgerow is anything but empty space between two places. It is full of life.
Trees and shrubs grow together. Birds nest in the branches. Small animals find shelter beneath them. Wildflowers, insects, vines, and fungi settle into the layers.From a distance, a hedgerow might look like a simple boundary. Up close, it is teeming with life.
We loved that image for this gathering.
There is something fitting about a place that is both cultivated and wild, ordered and abundant. A place with edges, but also depth. The longer you look, the more there is to notice.
That felt a lot like the kind of education Charlotte Mason invites us into, and the kind of gathering we wanted to create.
So, The Hedgerow.
WHY HEDGEROW?
We hope you leave The Hedgerow with ideas you want to keep thinking about.
Maybe something you hear gives language to a thought you've been carrying for a while. Maybe a conversation sends you back to a book you haven't opened in years. Maybe you meet someone who becomes a friend. Maybe you simply have the time and space to notice something you had been moving too quickly to see.
We aren't trying to send you home with more things to do.
We hope you leave with something better: renewed curiosity, good questions, new connections, and a little more delight in the work already in front of you.
Something worth carrying home.
WHAT WE HOPE GROWS HERE
WHO WE ARE
The Hedgerow is a nonprofit organization created by a small group of Charlotte Mason educators in western Wisconsin. We are mothers, teachers, readers, nature lovers, and friends who wanted a gathering like this closer to home.
This is our first Hedgerow, and we're very glad you're here.