Hometown Hero: At Pembroke’s ‘fairy house,’ woman engages local kids in collaborative art

Each summer, Lori Rowe sets up an interactive art display in her Pembroke yard for neighborhood children. The fairy garden was her first display three years ago.

Each summer, Lori Rowe sets up an interactive art display in her Pembroke yard for neighborhood children. The fairy garden was her first display three years ago. Lori Rowe / Courtesy

Each summer, Lori Rowe sets up an interactive art display in her Pembroke yard for neighborhood children. This summer, she had children paint rocks and form the snakes “Star” and “Sky” after letting the neighborhood vote on names.

Each summer, Lori Rowe sets up an interactive art display in her Pembroke yard for neighborhood children. This summer, she had children paint rocks and form the snakes “Star” and “Sky” after letting the neighborhood vote on names. courtesy Lori Rowe

Each summer, Lori Rowe sets up an interactive art display in her Pembroke yard for neighborhood children. This summer, she put out a table and chairs for kids to paint rocks and add to the long rock snakes growing in her yard.

Each summer, Lori Rowe sets up an interactive art display in her Pembroke yard for neighborhood children. This summer, she put out a table and chairs for kids to paint rocks and add to the long rock snakes growing in her yard. Lori Rowe—Courtesy

Lori Rowe looks over the letters that neighborhood children wrote to her for displaying hand-painted fairy houses with little gnomes and knick-knacks.

Lori Rowe looks over the letters that neighborhood children wrote to her for displaying hand-painted fairy houses with little gnomes and knick-knacks. GEOFF FORESTER—Monitor staff

Lori Rowe holds one of the hand-painted fairy knick-knacks at her Pembroke home.

Lori Rowe holds one of the hand-painted fairy knick-knacks at her Pembroke home. GEOFF FORESTER—Monitor staff

By RACHEL WACHMAN

Monitor staff

Published: 10-13-2024 12:00 PM

Modified: 10-14-2024 10:52 AM


To some in her Pembroke neighborhood, Lori Rowe’s home is known as the “fairy house” or the “fairy garden.”

It started three years ago when she put out a display of hand-painted fairy houses with little gnomes and knick-knacks. Nestled into the base of a tree in Rowe’s front yard, the fairy garden and its accompanying pile of hand-painted rocks drew the neighborhood children out of their homes.

“There was one little girl that lives up the street. She’d walk by, and one day, I said, ‘Ellie, if you want to play with any of this, you can.’ Then from there, her brother came, and it built that way. The kids would come over and play with it a little. So next year, I figured, ‘I’ll make it bigger so they can all do something,’” Rowe said.

The next summer, she created a beach scene complete with sand, a surf shop, and toy trucks for the kids to play with. Then, wanting to include the children in the process of decorating her yard, the following year Rowe decided to have them paint rocks. She set up a table and chairs with paint supplies and a prize bucket for participants. As children decorated the rocks, they added to the line of completed ones forming a “snake” growing across the grass.

“My kids love it. Every spring they look forward to when she gets these projects going,” said Ellie’s mom, Danielle Durgin. “The first thing they want to do in the morning is go to ‘the fairy garden.’”

This year, Rowe set the goal of creating two snakes. She let the children vote on names as they began painting. Her yard quickly became home to the rocky reptiles Star and Sky, made up of a total of 341 rocks that stretched dozens of feet.

“I have relatives who would go to the beach and bring me back rocks, and I drag people up north to the rivers and make them look for rocks for me. We come home with buckets of rocks from the rivers,” said Rowe, who also buys rocks from Home Depot to supplement what she’s able to find.

The mother of three and grandmother of two never expected participation in her projects would grow the way it has.

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“I like the way it brings the neighborhood together, getting to know them more than just if you pass the house and say hi. Now you know their names, you know the kids, what grade they’re in,” she said.

Even children on her street who come from out of town to visit relatives get to discover the charm of “the fairy house.” Rowe included some of her neighbors’ grandchildren, nieces, and nephews in the rock painting, building connections with kids who live in Alaska, Ohio, and Israel, among other places.

Sarah Shirilla, whose two sons beg her every morning to go to ‘the fairy house’ so they can paint rocks, said Rowe made all the kids back-to-school packages with hand-written notes, in addition to neighborhood t-shirts to commemorate their rock-painting endeavors. Last winter, she even sent the children a photo of their first neighborhood snake to wish them happy holidays.

Her neighbors relish the sense of community Rowe has fostered through her creativity.

“It’s like a little magical fairytale neighborhood. It’s incredible,” Shirilla said. “It started to grow and become a spot of community. We’d go and there would be other kids and their families there. The kids would play and the adults would chat. It’s become an anchor for a lot of us.”

Rowe says she loves being creative and seeing the joy her ideas bring the neighborhood children. She first discovered crafting around a decade ago because of Pinterest and tried bringing her goods to a craft fair but didn’t find much success, so she shifted to selling through a friend’s shop. Now, though, she just creates for fun.

Rowe also decorates rocks on her own. Two years ago, she began adorning them with cute animals, funny designs, and little messages.

“I pretty much leave them all over, wherever I travel in the state,” Rowe said. “I have a stash in my car. If I get gas, I usually leave one on the cement, by the pump. Or if I go to the store, I’ll leave it somewhere where people coming in or out of the store will see it.”

She labels the back of each rock with the Facebook group NH Rocks. Often people post pictures of the rocks they find. While she never claims the rocks she’s painted, she enjoys seeing other people’s reactions online.

Rowe hopes her art will inspire others to smile a little brighter and connect with those around them.

“Maybe somebody else will start a rock garden in their neighborhood and get to know all their neighbors and start a tradition, get people out of the house and talking to neighbors,” she added.

Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmonitor.com.