WILDSIDE

A MASSACHUSETTS GREEN THUMB IS GARDENING TO CHANGE THE WORLD, ONE ACRE AT A TIME.

Some gardens are defined by straight lines and right angles, plants trimmed into geometric shapes, bricks laid in accordance with the golden ratio. Wildside Cottage and Gardens, in Conway, Massachusetts, is not one of those places. ¶ Here, there are tangles of blackberries and sweet fern. Fields of blooming Queen Anne’s lace, heads high and blowsy in the wind. Even the cottage is blanketed in green grasses, the roof planted like a meadow, lush and untamed. The garden follows rules deeper and more significant than those that govern most landscapes. Wildside has wild logic.

This verdant 8.3-acre teaching compound is the work of Sue Bridge, founder and “resident steward.” With her short, no-nonsense hair, sun-lined face, and simple, practical clothes, Bridge doesn’t quite fit the earth mother stereotype. She has a professorial air, paired with a keen ability to sense when her visitor is getting lost in the weeds (and the grace to subtly redirect the conversation whenever this happens).

For the past dozen years, Wildside (a nonprofit since 2013) has been inviting kids and adults to come and learn from the landscape, to absorb the ins and outs of the kind of gardening practiced here, known as permaculture.

As Bridge explains it, permaculture ( permanent plus agriculture ) goes beyond organic gardening to encompass an interconnected system that includes not only food and garden - ing but also buildings, animals, and people. Bridge’s longtime friend and Wildside consultant Jono Neiger, author of The Permaculture Promise , says it’s about integrating all of it to create a sustainable way of living that uses less energy, produces less waste, and works with the local rhythms of the earth, the needs of that particular soil, and the lives of the regional flora and fauna.

Neiger leads fourthgraders on a tour of the forest garden at Wildside, which hosts school groups and offers public workshops throughout the summer and fall.

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Sickle in hand, Bridge inspects sheaves harvested from Wildside’s experimental rice field.