2025 Charlotteans Of The Year: Watch Love Grow

Like many ventures, Pretty Things by AE Manning started as a creative outlet during lockdown. Ashley Manning began crafting floral arrangements for friends and neighbors. As Valentine’s Day approached in 2021, she thought of her son’s preschool teacher, who had lost her husband a few years earlier. Manning felt compelled to help her feel loved on what might be the hardest holiday for a widow. 

She didn’t stop there. She took to Instagram to share her idea of surprising widows with flower arrangements on Valentine’s Day. She asked for nominee submissions and donations to make it happen. In quick order, she had dozens of names and hundreds of dollars. 

Manning had no trouble finding volunteers eager to serve in a tangible way. “We go to so many of these luncheons and galas where we feel compelled to help,” Manning says, “but there’s nothing for us to give other than money.”    

On February 14, 2021, with the help of volunteers and donations, 121 unsuspecting widows received flower arrangements. The Valentine’s Day Widow Outreach has continued to serve each year since. In 2025, 750 volunteer slots filled up in one day. Those volunteers arranged and delivered flowers to 1,500 widows. 

Valentine’s Day Widow Outreach, Photo by Kinston Photography

This year, Manning added another hard holiday for those who carry loss—Mother’s Day. “My grandmothers both lost children, it’s in honor of them,” Manning says. “My mother-in-law lost a son, it’s in honor of him. My good friend just lost her little boy, it’s in honor of him.” 

In its first year, A Mother’s Love Outreach brought together 120 volunteer flower arrangers and 100 volunteer drivers to deliver 300 arrangements to mothers in south Charlotte who had lost children—some recently, others decades before. 

“It was a lovely surprise,” says Scottie Thompson, who lost her 20-year-old daughter, Janey, from blood clot complications in 2024. “Every day is hard, but what gets me and the other women who have been through this is the thoughtfulness of your community. This was just another example of that.” 

Attached to each arrangement was a note that explained the mission and named the nominee. One side included a lyric from Lauren Daigle’s song “Rescue”: “There’s never been a moment you were forgotten.”

Once planning was underway, Manning worried that the arrangements could send recipients into despair. “I prayed 16 times a day that we were doing the right thing,” she says. Her fears were unfounded. 

“There’s a misconception, when people bring up your loss, that they worry you are going to be reminded of it,” Thompson says. “We live with it every single day.” 

Manning received notes from recipients not just to thank her but to share stories and photos of the child they had lost. “They are afraid that people are going to forget that their children were here,” she says.

In May, 220 volunteers gathered to prepare arrangements for south Charlotte women who had lost children. Photo by Cheyenne Schultz Photography

Now, both holiday outreach projects operate under a nonprofit organization, Watch Love Grow. The work has inspired others around the country. Manning consulted with individuals in Nashville; Buffalo; Eugene, Oregon; Hutchinson, Minnesota; and Wexford, Pennsylvania, to encourage them to launch similar outreach projects in their areas. 

The concept for Watch Love Grow could have easily stayed an idea, trapped in paralysis over logistics and scale. It could have been constricted, congested by feelings of ownership or rigidity over branding.  

Instead, it blossomed, and Manning wants it to deliver on its name.