Sailor now building a legacy ashore

RECOGNITION: Rod Brown, of The Shadehouse in Kerikeri, has been nominated for a Pride of New Zealand Award for his ceaseless efforts to improve and protect Northland's natural environment.

Centuries from now, when Northlanders look out over a Bay of Islands dotted with thriving native forest and raucous with bird calls, one of the people they'll have to thank is Rod Brown.

The former Navy commander, 76, is the driving force behind The Shadehouse, a volunteer-run nursery that has so far supplied a quarter of a million native plants and trees for replanting projects around Northland.

That effort, and his many other community and environmental roles, has seen him nominated for a Pride of New Zealand Award.

Mr Brown retired to Kerikeri after careers as a navigation specialist with the Navy - one of the ships he commanded, HMNNZS Tui, now rests on the seabed near Tutukaka as a dive attraction - and as a planner helping to build Starship Children's Hospital. He was first navigator on the HMNZS Canterbury, which was sunk in the Bay of Islands, also as a dive platform.

His epiphany came in 2000, when he was helping DOC rid an island in the Kerikeri Inlet of weeds and discovered, smothered under moth plant vines, a half-finished replanting project. He resolved to complete it, but first he needed several thousand seedlings.

He set about restoring an abandoned plant nursery behind DOC's Kerikeri headquarters, learnt how to propagate plants, and gathered a team of volunteers.

Once replanting of Motupapa (Cocked Hat Island) was complete he started on Motukawanui, in the Cavalli Islands; now his main focus is the Bay of Islands, where replanting of Waewaetorea Island was completed in 2012, and the volunteers are hard at work this winter on Urupukapuka and Moturua islands. As well as growing the seedlings Mr Brown organises regular planting days in which up to 100 volunteers head out to the islands to lend a hand.

The Shadehouse now produces about 25,000 shrubs and trees a year for 35 different restoration projects from Leigh to Cape Reinga. The number grown to date is just under 250,000.

Mr Brown is also deputy chairman of the Guardians of the Bay of Islands, a group that, along with DOC and Rawhiti iwi, is restoring the islands sprinkled between Russell and Cape Brett. The ambitious community-driven Project Island Song aims to bring back the islands' original plants, birds and insects.

DOC declared the islands free of rats in 2009, and the Shadehouse team have planted tens of thousands of trees, paving the way for last year's re-introduction of the toutouwai (North Island robin) and the return last month of the tieke (saddleback).

If that wasn't enough, Mr Brown also chairs the community planning group Vision Kerikeri, whose projects include creating a public walkway to a spectacular but currently inaccessible waterfall a short distance from the town centre, and creating a wildlife corridor further up the same stream.

Mr Brown said it was his firm belief that people should not sit back and wait for an under-resourced DOC or councils to act when something needed doing. He also believed the best thing councils and government agencies could do was to support initiatives that came from the community.

"The best outcomes are achieved when the community organises itself - and if you're willing to help yourselves, you will get support," he said.

The Pride of New Zealand Awards are proudly brought to you by The New Zealand Herald, The Hits and TSB Bank.
Nominations for the 2015 awards have now closed.
To see more stories of our wonderful nominees click here.
For more information on the awards go to the official website.