Fennel Hudson Author

Hi, I'm Fennel. I'm a nature writer, outdoorsman and conservationist. You've probably never heard of me. That's fine. I've spent most of my life hiding in hedgerows.

I'm also known as Nigel, Hubby, Daddy, and Professor Hudson; but these are names with very different stories. So, for my nature writing, I'm Fennel: the gentle one with strong roots.

Fennel's been my nickname since 1995. It stems back to my early career as a gardener on a country estate, when I flavoured some fishing bait with the herb. The aroma stuck and so did the name, so it seemed appropriate to use as my pen name. It's helped me to separate my day job and writing career, always reminding me of who I am when I sit down at my writing desk.

During the past forty years, I've written about the natural world, rural life, and countryside pursuits; I've published books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and films; sharing more than two million words with readers. I'm proud of this, but I should have spent more time heeding my advice to 'Stop, Unplug, Escape, Enjoy'.

My story

I was born in Worcestershire, England, in 1974. Dad was a schoolteacher and Mom was a housewife whose family had farmed in Shropshire for 300 years. In 1976 we moved to a village next to the 6,500-acre Enville Estate in rural Staffordshire. Inspired by John Seymour's Self Sufficiency book and TV's The Good Life, we lived a simple and deliberately traditional life. Mom loved gardening and nature, Dad was a keen angler, and I was captivated by the local Blists Hill, Black Country, and Acton Scott living museums. So I spent most of my time outdoors, gardening, fishing, and exploring the local country estate while dressed like a kid from a Victorian schoolhouse.

Life was very different back then. Wildlife was more prolific and diverse, the seasons were more distinct, electricity wasn't guaranteed and central heating was only for the rich. Being cooped up indoors wasn't much fun. Life was to be found outdoors.

I got my first job, aged 11, in 1985. 'An old head on young shoulders', apparently, which enabled me to work as a gardener on large country gardens. I was too small to control a lawn mower, so I was handed a scythe and told not to chop my legs off.

Gardening suited my character well. (I'm happiest in my own company and never more so than when I'm outdoors amongst nature.) It gave me the space and time to collect my thoughts, which resulted in my first book. Called 'Timekeep', it was a nicely bound handwritten thing that I shared with family and friends in 1985. It's a precocious tome for an 11-year-old, a time capsule of sorts that captured my thoughts and values for reference by my future self. It's kept me grounded for forty years.

I excelled in English at school, due to my fabulous English teacher and my love of reading. I wrote my second book in 1987, a Hobbit-inspired funny story about dwarves and a pyro-flatulent dragon, which was published by my school and placed in the school library. I was super proud. It led to me becoming editor of my school newspaper in 1988 and then, having been introduced to BB's countryside books, I switched to writing about nature and the countryside. I wrote four little nature books (extended essays) and then, at the age of 19, began a phenomenally successful writing and publishing career.

Well, that's not entirely true.

I'd like to say that writing and publishing has paid the bills since 1993. It hasn't. Far from it. Like most writers, I've had a day job. 

I studied horticulture at college and landscape architecture at university, indulging my love of plants, ecology, and green spaces, then worked in horticulture for a further eight years before moving into environmental and sales consultancy. I wrote prolifically throughout this time, penning three thousand words each night. Most were letters sent to my friends, some where little storybooks, and a great deal were magazine articles that I never submitted. (I was always shy and lacking in confidence.)

In 2004, after a bump in life's road, I met Mrs-H-to-Be. She discovered the boxes full of my secret writing and insisted that I do something positive with it. I decided to share the unpublished articles as letters with my friends and then, in 2012, I published them as magazines that became known as 'Fennel's Journal'. The last of them sold out in 2017, so I republished them as books. It's for these titles that I'm best known, along with my conservation work for The Wild Carp Trust.

How many books have I sold? Some in their thousands, most in their hundreds. Book sales were good until 2020, when Covid hit and social media use took off. Gradually there was more and more free and accessible content out there, which made selling books progressively harder. I suspect that audiobooks are the way forward, with podcasts being the middle ground where potential readers can hear the author's voice. It's why I've launched Nature Writer. It's my way of bringing nature authors and readers together, to share their love of natural history and the countryside books that connect them.

I hope you love it.

Fennel