Maybe you’ve seen them while driving through the neighborhood: yards decorated with colorful flowers made from paper plates and paper hearts. Known as “flower bombs,” they’re often sent from loved ones to a friend or family’s house and “planted” under the guise of surprise.

The paper flowers and hearts come in different sizes, colors, shapes and patterns—but all are handmade by volunteers. And all of their proceeds are donated to the Ronald McDonald House in Baltimore, which provides a home away from home to families with seriously ill or injured children.

Kim Meagher, a longtime Ronald McDonald House volunteer, got the idea for the Quarantine Flower Bombing Project after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the state.

“I teach a women’s art class at my church, and a lot of young moms attend,” Meagher says. “When quarantine hit and school was canceled, everyone was kind of in a panic, so I started posting online crafts to do with your kids daily. I came across the paper plate flowers and thought it would be an awesome thing to do as a ding dong ditch-type of activity—where you decorate someone’s yard, but they don’t know it’s you.”

The government shutdowns also prevented volunteers from being at the Ronald McDonald House in Jonestown, where 10 families are currently quarantined. That meant volunteers could no longer help provide meals to the children and families there. Meagher had a hunch that people would pay for the flower bombs, especially if they knew they would be supporting a good cause.

“On a whim I talked to the women in my art class and they all said, ‘We’re in,’” Meagher says. “I thought, ‘I’ll throw it up on Facebook and see what happens.’ It went nuts.”

Since beginning on April 28, Meagher says the flower bombing project has raised more than $8,000 to continue providing meals for the families at the Ronald McDonald House.

About 40 families are helping create and “plant” the paper plate flowers and hearts. Meagher says they’ve delivered “everywhere” in Baltimore, and can also ship anywhere for an extra cost. All deliveries include a note on one of the flowers letting the recipient know that a donation will be made in their honor to the Ronald McDonald House.

The flower bombs have been popular as a way to celebrate birthdays, graduations and anniversaries, but they’ve also become a tool to reach out to loved ones whom the stay-at-home orders might have separated.

“Everyone’s tired of being at home, and suddenly there’s this flower bouquet in their yard, and it just really makes them smile,” Meagher says. “And we’re now finding that people who receive them are sending them, which has been cool to see.”

The process of making the flowers proves to be just as fulfilling. Nine-year-old twins Ady and Callie are two of the many “flower ninjas” in charge of creating and planting the flower bombs. Their mom, Molly Seaborn, says the girls have enjoyed flower bombing teachers and friends, as well as creating how-to videos on the project’s Facebook page.

“My favorite part is getting to paint [the flowers] because you can paint them by hand all these different ways,” Ady says. Adds Callie, “We’re not supposed to get caught [when we plant them], but I like being caught, because then we get to have a conversation that’s not online and just say hi and that we miss you.”

If interested in sending a flower bomb, visit the project’s Facebook page
for pricing, payment and delivery details. To join the project and help create flowers, contact Meagher and other organizers via the Facebook page.

“What’s been great is to see whole families making the flowers together, like a grandmother with her daughter and grandson,” Meagher says. “It’s a great activity. Anyone can do it.”

There’a a new addition to the Baltimore skyline: a 26-foot-tall glowing red heart that overlooks 1 Aisquieth Street. That beaming symbol belongs to the much-anticipated Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) Maryland, which will open its brand-new location in the historic Jonestown neighborhood on May 14.

The $30-million project will allow the RMHC to expand its mission of providing a home away from home to families with seriously ill or injured children by accommodating 2,200 families annually, more than doubling the occupancy of the current house on West Lexington Street. “We were turning away as many as 30 families per night and over 600 families per year because we didn’t have room,” says RMHC president and CEO Sandy Pagnotti. “Our old house is a wonderful place, but our families deserve the absolute best.”

While some guest-favorite comforts will continue at the new house (gift cubbies for the children and volunteer-made meals, to name a few), families will have access to new five-star amenities such as a business center, a classroom, and a meditation room.

Since the house was designed around the team’s philosophy of making it “the Ritz meets Disney meets Grandma’s,” messages of love and warmth are spread throughout the 60,000-square-foot facility, including “hope stones” made by previous visitors that are layered into the foundation of three of the floors. As part of RMHC’s effort to engage with the Jonestown community, the house’s “backyard” will transform into a city park featuring a playground and a basketball court.

For Renee Boca and her 7-year-old daughter, Hannah the experience of staying at the RMHC has been defined by its community of staff and volunteers. When they left Ireland in December to receive treatment at Sinai Hospital for Hannah’s rare orthopedic condition, Boca worried that the intense physical therapy would wear on Hannah’s outgoing spirit.

But now she says that Hannah has blossomed thanks to her interactions with everyone from the shuttle drivers to the other children. “She’s really grown as a person because of the supportive environment she’s been in,” says Boca.

As for the families who will move into the new house once it opens this month, Boca says they can expect to live by the saying, “Enter as strangers, leave as friends” that hung on the wall of the house on West Lexington Street: “People say that it takes a village to raise children, and it very much feels like that when you’re at the RMHC.”

If you’ve driven in Southeast Baltimore these past few weeks, you may have noticed a glowing, red heart has been added to the skyline. That beaming symbol belongs to the much-anticipated Ronald McDonald House Charities Maryland (RMHC), which will open its brand new location in the historic Jonestown neighborhood on May 14.

The $30 million, 60,000-square-foot project will allow the nonprofit to expand its purpose of providing a home-away-from-home to families with seriously ill or injured children by accommodating 2,200 families annually, more than doubling the occupancy of the current house. Ahead of its opening, we talked with the facility’s president and CEO Sandy Pagnotti to learn more about the new house.

What inspired the decision to construct the new Ronald McDonald House Charities Maryland?
We’ve been over on West Lexington Street for 36 years. We can currently house 32 families, but over the past 10 years we’ve had an ongoing waiting list. We were turning away as many as 30 families per night and over 600 families per year because we didn’t have room. So six or seven years ago, we decided to start thinking about building a new house. Our old house is a wonderful place, but our families deserve the absolute best.

Why 1 Aisquieth Street?
We wanted to be close to our partner hospitals, about equal distance. The new house is more central to our kids at Johns Hopkins, Kennedy Kreiger, the University of Maryland Hospitals, and Sinai Hospital. This also gave us the opportunity to come into an underserved community and really try to become an anchor of change. We hope that we become a catalyst for more good things to come into this community. There’s so many wonderful people and programs here already and we’re excited to add to it.

How will RMHC interact with the Jonestown community?
We’ve been working with Baltimore City Recreation and Parks to build a new city park with a basketball court and a playground. That’s part of our auxiliary project so that when our doors open we’ll also have helped make a new city park. That way local kids and our kids can all play together. That’s the vision: Our mission goes beyond our own bricks and mortar. It is bigger than what happens inside the walls—we’re also helping to spread love outside.

Tell us about some of the new features and amenities in the new house.
Our team has a philosophy that our house is the Ritz meets Disney meets Grandma’s. The accommodations are five star, it’s family-focused and child-friendly, and our families feel feel warm, nurtured, and taken care of here. New to the house is a serenity room, a teen and young adult room, student classroom space, a business center, fitness center, our first-ever kosher pantry, a board and community room that can be rented out by community groups or businesses, and more. There’s also a special Magic Room for when the kids get surprise visits, presents, or anything special. We have been collecting ideas for years, and now we’re excited to implement as many as we can.

What is the All You Need is Love project and how will it be utilized in the new house?
About seven or eight months ago, we put a call out to artists saying that we wanted to adorn the walls of the new house with art that’s loving and happy and brings joy to families. Now we have more than 250 pieces of art that were donated. We asked for as many of them, if they could, to put hearts somewhere in the work. And then eventually, we’ll make a heart-art scavenger hunt for the kids. When planning, we tried to think, “What’s going to make this feel like more than just a hotel? What are the pieces that are going to make it feel like home?” So we really put a focus on art and infusing the community into everything we do.

What’s the idea behind the giant red heart on top of the building?
Our heart is 26 feet tall and, at night, it lights up the sky. We just kept thinking, “How great would it be to have an iconic part of the skyline?” I say that the biggest hearts in Baltimore have always been inside [the RMHC], but now it’s outside, too. And now we can shine that love all over Baltimore.