Young Ambassador Kendra leads Carrick-on-Suir sensory garden project

A community sensory garden is to be created in Carrick-on-Suir over the next few months, and spearheading the project is a 17-year-old student who will represent Ireland at the European final of the Young Ambassador of the 21st Century competition later this year.
Kendra Watson from John Street, Carrick-on-Suir, has a busy few months ahead as she endeavours to realise her vision for the garden filled with plants, wildlife and features to stimulate the five senses.
A site in the town will be chosen for the garden over the next few weeks. Once that happens, it will be all systems go to turn it into an urban Eden for people with special sensory needs and the wider community by summer.
The Scoil Mhuire Secondary School student, who is originally from South Africa, won the national final of the Lions Young Ambassador of the 21st Century competition in the Newpark Hotel Kilkenny last month.
The contest recognises teenagers aged between 15 and 19 for their community service, leadership and communications skills.
The garden was the community project proposal Kendra presented to the panel of three judges at the national, now as Ireland’s newly crowned Youth Ambassador, the Fifth Year student must turn her proposal into reality for the European final, which takes place in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, from October 27 to 29.
Kendra said she initially devised the idea for the sensory garden as her proposed community project for the Carrick-on-Suir final of the Young Ambassador competition run by Carrick Lions Club last November. She never envisaged then that it would ever move beyond a proposal on a piece of paper.
She thought a community garden would be a good way of bringing people together after the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic while the sensory aspect of the garden stemmed from having family members and friends with special sensory needs.
She wants the garden to be a place where local people can take a few moments out of their day to visit and enjoy.
“The garden will be all about the five senses. There will be flowers and plants like lavender, spices and mint to smell; bees, birds and wind chimes to listen to and colourful flowers to see,” Kendra told The Nationalist.
“I was also thinking of having some sort of water feature as another hearing feature. For the sense of touch, there are different types of mosses you can plant and there is a really cool plant called Touch Me Not. It closes in when you touch it. And for the sense of taste there are plants like wild mint.”
Kendra says she would also like the garden to have a river boat as a feature because it’s a symbol of Carrick-on-Suir and its tradition of fishing.
She has €600 funding from Lions Club to assist with creating the garden and is hoping to also secure sponsorship from a local company or organisation.
Her dad’s firm Keltech is drawing up a detailed plan for the garden and is donating wooden pallets that can be transformed into benches. She has a shopping list of plants to purchase once the site is chosen.
“I have spoken to Carrick-on-Suir Men’s Shed group and they are on board to help out. Pat Callanan , who is involved in the group, has been amazing.”
Friends from Scoil Mhuire Secondary School will also be helping out and Kendra is also hoping to get a few volunteers from Edmund Rice Secondary School where her brother attends.
Her involvement in a number of groups in her school and local community prompted her student council teacher at Scoil Mhuire, Ms Annette O’Connell, to nominate her for the Carrick-on-Suir Young Ambassador competition.
Kendra, her parents Angela and Greg and brother Callum moved to Carrick-on-Suir from South Africa seven years ago. She recalls her parents encouraged her from the beginning to get involved in the community in their new hometown to help her to fit in. She did just that and hasn’t looked back since.
She has been a member of Scoil Mhuire’s Student Council for the past five years and is chairperson of the school’s Green Schools Committee.
Outside school, she helps to coach soccer to children at Carrick United FC every Saturday and has also been involved in Foróige and Carrick-on-Suir Musical Society.
She is Carrick-on-Suir’s representative on Comhairle na nÓg, which is County Tipperary’s Youth Council.
Kendra confesses she was shocked and very honoured to win the national Young Ambassador title in Kilkenny on Sunday, January 16.
She said the other five finalists were an amazing bunch of people and the judges had a really hard job to choose the winner.
As part of her award, she will get the chance to take part in one of a series of Young Ambassador summer camps being run in a number of European countries this summer where young people will gather to take part in cultural and community leadership activities in preparation for the European final. She is hoping to go to a three-week long summer camp in Italy.
“It's an amazing opportunity. I would never have thought this would happen,” she says.
In the meantime, she is focusing on getting the community sensory garden off the ground. Kendra pays tribute to Carrick-on-Suir Lions Club for all the support its members have given her over the past few months.
She invites companies or local organisations interested in providing sponsorship for the community garden project to contact Carrick-on-Suir Lions Club by messaging the club’s Facebook page.

Also read: 

Carrick-on-Suir secondary school to stage science fair this week