Audrey Eagle (1925-2022)

Audrey Lily Brodey was born in Timaru in 1925 but moved to the United Kingdom with her parents when she was eight. A skilled draughtswoman, she returned to New Zealand with her husband, Harold Eagle, to live in the Waikato in 1949. The couple then lived in New Plymouth between 1984 and 1996.

Audrey's detailed botanical works were published as Eagle’s Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand in 1975 and 1982. Both volumes were prize-winners in the Wattie Book Awards and have seldom been out of print since. In 1986 she was awarded the prized Loader Cup for her “significant contribution to the cause of conservation within New Zealand.”

In 2006 her two-volume Eagle’s Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand was published to great acclaim by Te Papa Press, five years after Eagle was appointed to the New Zealand Order of Merit for her service to botanical art.

Audrey Eagle moved to Dunedin after Harold's death and in 2013 Otago University awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Science for her botanical and environmental endeavours. She died in 2022.