There are many definitions of what a Hedgewitch is on the internet. Ask a few Hedgewitches to answer the question and you will receive several more. Even those who live the life, do not agree on a definition, and theres even more discussion as to the origins of the term.

Hedgewitch is said to come from the fact, that a hedge separated these Wise Women from the village. That they gathered their herbs etc from the hedgerows. Plus it was believed that these Witches flew the hedges on their broomsticks. Modern day lore has made an analogy with the hedge being the barrier between this world and the next, as Witches are thought to be able to pass between worlds.

Whatever the origin, it is unlikely that those Wise Women thought of themselves as Hedgewitches, this being a modern label.

Hedgewitches are individual, unique, diverse, yet there are commonalities there. 

The following is my personal view.

For me, Hedgewitches were the Wise Women of the village, practicing what was known as Wise Craft, later to be called Witchcraft. They lived outside the village, an outcast almost, feared and respected by the villagers. The romantic view is that their cottage, which was most likely a shack or a hut, was separated from the village by a hedge.  The reality is, most likely that it was separated by a coppice. There would be the village, with a few farms, small holdings, workers dwellings, the landowners houses, all within a certain area, and then a few dwellings outside the village.

One pictures this rather mad old woman with a cat and maybe chickens living alone.

How true is this?

Old ! People aged quicker in those times and didn't live as long, but she would have been young once. Learning her craft from her Mother, Grandmother. Much is written about a "Book of Shadows" as a log of rituals and recipes, but most of these women would not have been able to write, and even if they could it is very doubtful that family secrets would have been written down, thus dispelling Gardner's idea. All the Knowledge would have been hand down by practice. The young Witch would have grown up, found a partner had children etc. But for some of the females in the family their destiny was fixed. I do not dispute that there was something which set them apart from others.

Mad! Living alone wandering through the woods, collecting herbs by moonlight with only a cat to talk to. Going places and doing things that most other people were scared of, would have classed them as mad. I think partly this was actually played upon by the Witches themselves, it was part of their protection and sadly part of their downfall in some cases.

What did these Women do? In a time before the intervention of contemporary medicine, they did everything. These were the ones called upon to deliver the babes, and to lay out the dead. Plus a multitude of things in between. They knew which herbs to use to solve unwanted pregnacies, cure a fever, heal a wound. Young lovestruck girls and youths would visit for potions spells and advice. Women with straying or too attentive husbands would seek them out for solutions to their problems, it didn't matter whether they were the peasants or the landowners, all sought out the Wise Woman for problems have no class boundary. Farmers with a sick cow used their healing balms. The Wise Women were in tune with their instincts, they used their intuition and above all the wisdom passed down from their ancestors. These attributes enabled their survival. They were necessary to village life but separate to it, never fully integrated.

If things were going well, life was good for the Wise Woman, but not so good, when a much wanted child was still born, or the sick animal died, then it became the fault of the Witch.

With the advent of Christianity, these sisters were persecuted with a vengeance!

Accused of everything. Sky clad rituals, consorting with the devil, even mating with their"familiars".         Sky clad ritual, I doubt it, they were too busy to be indulging in such a modrn term. Maybe  someone witnessed them taking a bathe in the stream at night time and propagated that myth. Consorting with the devil, does not justify a comment nor does anything regarding their familars. Cats were kept as mousers and rat catchers, and who amongst us do not speak to our pets.

Covens hold no place in Hedgewitch history, they were solitary beings, and still are. You may have had 2 sisters practicing together or a mother and daughter etc, but nothing resembling a coven.      

Todays Hedgewitches are very similar, using modern tools and learning alongside instinct, intuition and the inner Knowledge. The cauldron may have been exchanged for a wok, the shack for a house, the village for the worldwideweb, but much else remains the same.