Connie Hudson

• Seasonal propagation of a wide range of plant material including helping to produce new strains of Hepaticas and Hellebore through pollination at Ashwood. Hardwood cuttings, softwood cuttings, root cuttings, leaf cuttings, basal cuttings, seed.
• Pruning a wide range of plant material including coppicing, crown cleaning, thinning, reducing and raising, deadheading and attendance at Great Dixter Pruning Symposiums.
• Meadow, Lawn, Hedge and topiary cutting and management.
• Planting and editing borders, including improving the soil, weeding, removing/ editing/ propagating plants from the garden, adding annuals and bulbs.
• Preparing and arranging or editing pot displays.
• Composting and using this throughout the garden.
• Plant supports including staking and natural structures.
• Producing soil mixes.
• Greenhouse management, mostly protecting and storing tender plants throughout winter.
• Producing annual plants for inclusion in borders
• Working and learning at events such as the Great Dixter Plant Fairs, symposiums, study days, friends of Dixter events, working weekends and local talks, Ashwood Nursery Open days, Johns Garden Tours and Ashwood Plant species talks.
• Helping to order new plants and produce ideas for seasonal displays.
• Attended courses, workshops and talks including the ISU conference in Grunberg.
• Nursery work including plant sales at Ashwood Nurseries and Great Dixter.
• Worked with plant collections including Hepaticas, Hellebores, Cyclamen and Lewisia.
• Carried out day-to-day duties accurately and efficiently.

Personal project while freelance local gardener, and selling self propagated plants from home garden through Facebook marketplace and Ebay.

Assistant Ecologist, 09/2022 - 11/2021

Southern Ecological Solutions

• Field Coordinator, creating Artificial Badger Sets, badger bating, badger track and natural set scoping.
• Highly experienced in translocation projects for Great Crested Newt, Grass Snakes and other amphibians, reptiles, and mammals
• Worked with Great Crested Newt detection dogs.
• Scoping, analysing, monitoring, bating, proofing, and closing natural and artificial badger sets which many different habitats and locations.
• Operating light and heavy equipment.
• Dawn and Dusk Bat surveying, use of infrared cameras, and multiple bat detectors.
• Great Crested Newt bottle trap, HSI, eDNA, and spotlight check surveys
• Preforming ECOW (ecological clerk of works) before, during and after excavation.
• Performed Preliminary roost assessments
• Performed Phase1 Habitat surveys through different data collection platforms.

• Coordinating and supervising 40+ volunteers of different nationalities to complete daily animal tasks, including feeding cleaning and caring for rescue animals.
• Teaching social media team how to grow all social media platforms and created posts for rescue.
• Recruiting of volunteers and general promotion for rescue through various social media platforms.
• Daily analysing each animals' behaviour (happiness, stress etc) and providing appropriate enrichment strategies, conditioning, or care.
• Assessing animal suitability for rescued animal release programme, and taking part in releasing animals.
• Working with all staff teams, veterinarian, maintenance, kitchen
• Designing and building appropriate, fun, and safe enclosures, toys, games and large variety of enrichment's for animals and their different needs.
• Attending staff and volunteer daily meetings suggesting improvements to routines, practices, works, and raising any issues.
• Giving tours to visitors and new volunteers or staff members, explaining strict rescue and governmental rules and regulations (including no selfie rule) and ecology and background of each animal.

• Processed sold and returned products and setting up those products for in-store and customers
• Birmingham showroom team increased sales in 2020 by 60%
• Participated in professional development opportunities to strengthen product and service knowledge
• Provided professional customer service, answering all questions and providing advice
• Keeping shop floor, staff area, and bicycle service workshop clean and hazardous free.

Lived in Girona Spain, Texas America, and Oudenaarde Belgium.

Competing worldwide with a UK team while in Europe and a North American Team while living in Texas. While competing in Texas I volunteered at local dog shelter. I was a cyclist for the British Cycling Olympic Junior Development Programme during 2016-2017.