Same-Day Flowers to Bayswater, From the Grower Across the River

Funeral or family home. With no funeral parlour inside the suburb itself, that is the first thing to sort, because the two are different gestures and they go to different places. Service flowers need the funeral director's name and the service time; condolences go to the house.

From what our florists have seen across Perth's inner north-east, the safest colour across the Italian Catholic, Vietnamese, Chinese and Greek Orthodox families here is white, and red is the one to avoid. If you are not sure of the family's tradition, say so on the order and the florist will keep it simple and safe. Flowers will not fix what has happened. You already know that. They just say the thing you cannot say from a distance. A line like "With deepest sympathy, thinking of you and your family" travels safely when you do not know what else to write. And it is worth getting those few words right, because the flowers will be gone inside a week and the card is the part the family keeps.

Anna, qualified florist

White lilies are the most traditional flower for an Italian Catholic funeral, and the Italian families here run deep, a lot of them anchored to St Columba's parish since the thirties. White and pink roses sit comfortably alongside the lilies. One bench trick with the lilies: as the buds open, pinch out the anthers, the little pollen sacs in the middle. No rust-coloured stains on the petals or the tablecloth, and the bloom holds a couple of days longer. For the Vietnamese families it is white as well, and if the florist can get white lotus, that is the stem that carries the most weight; those wakes are often held at home over several days, so the flowers want to arrive before or during, not after. One thing I steered people off more than once on the phones: chrysanthemums belong at the funeral, but never as a gift to an Italian or Chinese home, where they are the flower of the dead, full stop. And when it is a celebration of life rather than a church service, more of the families here are choosing natives over a white wreath, something that looks like the country.

Six aged care homes sit inside this one suburb, which is a lot. Mertome Village, over on Winifred Road, was the first council-built aged care home in the country when it opened in the seventies, and the trade has only grown here since. So plenty of the orders come from adult kids who live too far away to drop in this week, often around a milestone like a 90th.

A big facility is the one place a gift can genuinely go astray, so the florist needs the resident's full name and, if you have it, the wing or room. From what our florists have seen, the flowers go to reception, staff sign for them and walk them through, and a box arrangement is the kind thing to send because nobody on a busy shift then has to find a vase and change the water. A card that just says "Thinking of you today" is plenty. And if the wing is a dementia one, do not get hung up on whether they will remember who sent them. The flowers might land more for you than for them. That is reason enough to send them.

There is a stem question that comes with the memory-care wings, too.

In a shared room or a dementia wing, skip the heavy scented Oriental lilies; the fragrance and the pollen are too much in a small space. Go for something low-scented and familiar instead, carnations and chrysanthemums, the kind of stems that read like a home garden. They are also the toughest in a warm room, which most of those rooms are. Small footprint, low fragrance, long life. That is the brief for an aged care bedside, every time.

Half the people here work in an office or for the government, so a lot of what goes out is work flowers: a farewell, a deal closed, a thank you to someone who saved your week. The whole floor will walk past them, so they have to read right.

Reception is the usual drop, so the building name and level help, and morning beats late afternoon for an office address. It does not need to cost a fortune to look considered, and you can keep it tidy with something under sixty dollars or step up to the full range for a bigger thank you.

I would not send roses to a reception desk. Half of them are tired by Wednesday in an air-conditioned office, and the gesture goes with them. A hydrangea is worse: it looks lush in the shop and wilts on a dry desk by mid-week unless someone tops the water up twice a day. Chrysanthemums, lisianthus and the West Australian natives hold their shape under fluorescent light for the full week, which is exactly how long you want a thank you sitting where everyone can see it. The natives mostly come from Belmont, a short hop away, so they reach the florist about as quickly as anything in the bucket. If you want it to read more expensive than it cost, lisianthus does that, and it lasts.

Plenty of orders do not fit a tidy category. That is fine.

Tell us the budget and who it is for, and let the florist choose. They are standing in front of buckets that came over from the East Perth glasshouses that morning, and they know what came in strong and what to skip. That is usually a better arrangement than anything you could pick blind off a screen, because it is built from the best of what actually arrived that day, not from a photo taken months ago. In winter that often means tulips and iris, which you only get a few months of the year. The money tends to go further on a local build, too: locally grown stems put more actual flower in front of your person than the same spend on roses flown in from overseas, days older before anyone has even arranged them.