Same Day Flowers to Balmain East, Terrace or Unit

It's her birthday, or it's your anniversary, and today you're somewhere else. Home or work decides the order: at home a wrapped bunch from our birthday flowers for your wife range is plenty, but if she works across the water in the city, send an arrangement already in its vase, because nobody at reception has a spare one. Put her mobile in the notes. If nobody answers, our florists tend to ring that number before anything gets left on a sunny step.

For an anniversary, go with the 3 Wrapped Red Roses. Three stems want a narrow vase about two-thirds their height, so they stand up straight on their own. Keep them in a cool room off the windowsill and the red holds.

Someone is in Balmain Hospital on Booth Street for rehab, or settling into the Salvation Army's Montrose on Thames Street, and you can't get there this week. The notes do the work: ward and bed for the hospital, full name and room for Montrose. In our experience staff at the ward desk or reception log the flowers and take them in. Get-well flowers suit the first, thinking of you flowers the second. For the hospital, a card might read: "Thinking of you. Back on your feet soon."

Anna, on a long stay

A long stay needs stems that go the distance. Carnations and chrysanthemums barely notice the dry air in a ward or a care home, and a chrysanthemum can still look tidy a fortnight on. An arrangement in its own vase means nobody goes looking for one.

There's a funeral notice for St Mary's on Darling Street or St Augustine's, and a service you may not make. Church or home are two different orders: a wreath or sheath goes to the church on the morning of the service, and sympathy flowers for the home go to the family in the days after. Put the funeral director's name and the service time in the notes, and the florist tends to work back from that time so the tribute is there before the family arrives. Card idea: "Thinking of you all. With love."

Anna's call: white roses and lilies suit an Anglican or a Catholic service equally, and a sheath lies flat on the coffin or a pew without tipping.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: a new job in the city, a thank-you, a housewarming in a new unit. For any of those, the Australian Native Arrangement is our second most popular product, and Anna has a reason to pick it.

Natives like banksia and protea are dense, woody stems, and they hold their shape long after softer flowers have dropped. When the soft stems finish, the banksia cones dry on a shelf and last for months. If they're moved into a vase, split the base of each woody stem a few centimetres, because a clean cut alone won't let it drink. More in our native flowers range.