Albany Flowers, WA: Same-Day Even This Far South

Nothing in a bunch of flowers undoes what has happened, and you already know that. The service is down in Albany, a flight or a long drive from you, and these stand in for you in the room you cannot get to, on the day you cannot make.

Sort it by where it goes. Condolences go to the home, in the first few days. Flowers for a service go to the funeral director or the chapel, addressed with the date and the family name. From what the florists who cover the area have seen, a lot of Albany send-offs are a celebration of a life held graveside or in a function room more often than in a church, so the safest move is to give us the venue and the time and let the flowers arrive before people do. When it is graveside, that is often the Pioneer Cemetery on Middleton Road, the old ground where some of the headstones belong to men who died aboard the convoy ships out in the Sound in 1914.

For a celebration of a life, the white-only rule can go straight out the window. White is the safe ground when you know nothing about the person, and for a requiem it is exactly right. But Albany sends a lot of people off from a graveside or a function room, and natives carry a meaning here a florist’s white sheaf does not: banksia, kangaroo paw, a little eucalyptus, the things that actually grow on the country the person lived on. If the family is Menang, or another Aboriginal family, the one rule is to follow their lead, because every family does sorry business its own way. If the person had a favourite colour, or grew everything orange in the garden, send that. The flowers fade inside a couple of weeks, but the card is the part the family keeps, so make it carry one true thing about them, and with our love. Send flowers for the service only once you have the where and the when.

Most of the flowers we send into Albany have nothing to do with a date on the calendar. They come from someone in Perth or over east to a parent who retired to the coast, or a friend who moved to the far south of the state and is still finding their feet. You cannot drop in, so the flowers do the dropping in for you.

These almost always go to a home, and the wrinkle is who is in to take them. A good share of older Albany residents do not drive, and the coast around Emu Point and Bayonet Head has holiday homes that sit empty midweek, so a bunch left at a gate cannot be rescued by asking the person to collect it from a depot. Give us an authority to leave and a shaded, out-of-the-wind spot, or a mobile to ring, and the morning run sorts the rest.

Some of these go to one of Albany’s care homes, or to the hospice on Warden Avenue. Those land at reception and a staff member carries them through to the room, so a box arrangement is the kindest format: nothing to find a vase for, no water to change, and stems someone will know from a WA garden over a showy import. In a palliative setting especially, from what our florists find, flowers tend to be welcome, and that is where they do the quietest work.

I took plenty of these calls where the sender had no idea what to send, only that it had been too long. I told them the same thing every time: do not overthink the flower, think about the window it has to survive. For a coast like that I would steer them to something built to take the salt and the wind, a few proteas or some kangaroo paw through it, over a clutch of soft heads that look perfect in the photo and tire by the second day. The message matters more than the stems here anyway. A card that says thinking of you, from a long way off, does more work than any flower.

Sending flowers to someone who is unwell, when you cannot be the one sitting beside the bed, is its own kind of helpless. A lot of the get well orders here are exactly that, from family a long drive or a flight away, or from a farm a couple of hours further out than Albany itself.

Albany Health Campus on Warden Avenue is the only hospital the whole Great Southern shares, so its wards hold people from far past Albany itself. Flowers go to the main reception there and the staff carry them through to the bedside, which means the order needs the patient’s full name and ward number, and is best sent once they are properly admitted rather than still down in emergency. If they are in intensive care or on the cancer ward, those generally cannot take flowers at all, so wait until they have been moved onto a general ward. If a maternity bunch is going in, address it to the mother by name. For a recovery back at home, a get well bunch can go bigger and brighter than a ward will take, and hospital flowers are best kept smaller and low-scent.

Anna, on what a sickroom can actually keep

The ward calls taught me one rule before any other: no lilies. The pollen travels, a shared bay or a maternity room is the last place you want it, and a heavy scent in a closed room stops being a kindness fast. Keep it low and compact so it earns its bit of bench space. If you want it still going when the next visitor turns up, carnations and chrysanthemums hold a fortnight in a warm room and lisianthus is not far behind. Gerbera looks the part, but the neck bends within a few days once the air warms, so it is the wrong pick when it has to last the stay. On the card, keep it light: thinking of you, hope the worst of it is behind you.

Plenty of Albany orders are none of those three: a thank-you to someone who helped out, an eightieth for a neighbour who has seen a hundred bunches, a just-because for someone who has gone quiet. Do not hunt for the perfect category. Suit the person and the verandah and you are most of the way there.

If you would rather I picked, here is the call I would make. Send a boxed arrangement of natives over a hand-tied bunch. It gives more flower for the money, which counts out here where the wages run below the rest of the state; it needs no vase found and no water changed, which counts when the person it is going to cannot easily do either; and it shrugs off a hot, windy doorstep in a way soft imported stems never will. Most of those stems grew in this state rather than on a truck across the country, and on an Albany doorstep that toughness is the whole point.