Flowers to Bayview, NSW: Four Aged-Care Homes, and a Funeral at Mona Vale

When someone in Bayview dies, the family is dealing with more than they can hold, and you are trying to get something right for them from a long way off. A quiet house with white flowers in it carries what a message on a phone cannot.

The first thing to sort is where they are meant to go. Condolences for the family go to the home. Service flowers go to the funeral home or the church with the date and time on the order, and Bayview's services almost all run through Ann Wilson Funerals two kilometres down at Mona Vale, or the cemetery on Mona Vale Road. For a funeral we line the delivery up with the director's window, because from what our florists see, a spray that turns up after the cars have left cannot be re-sent. More of these are celebrations of a life now than strict funerals, which changes what to send as much as it changes the mood. If the words are the part you are stuck on, "Thinking of you and your family" is enough on the card. Keep it simple, because the card is the part that lasts: long after the flowers are gone it stays in a drawer or on the fridge, and it gets read more than once.

Anna, qualified florist

For the service itself, send funeral flowers in whites and creams with greenery to settle them, and leave the lily anthers to the florist, they will pull them so nothing stains. For the family home, I steer people away from a wrapped hand-tie and toward something for the home in a box or vase, because nobody grieving wants to be cutting stems and finding a vase the week of a funeral. And when the family is holding a celebration of a life rather than a traditional service, I throw the white-only rule out. Natives for someone who walked the Ku-ring-gai tracks or sailed Pittwater, or simply their favourite colour in the room, red included, which a traditional white sheaf would never carry. Ask what they loved and build from there.

There is a particular weight to sending flowers to a parent in a home when you live a few states away, or overseas, which for a Bayview family is more common than not, and the visits have got further apart than you ever meant them to. No one is asking you to apologise for the distance. The flowers are simply a way of sitting with her for an afternoon when you cannot be there to do it yourself.

Bayview holds four aged-care and retirement communities for a suburb its size, most of them off Cabbage Tree Road. Those orders do not go to a front door, they go to a reception desk, get logged, and are walked through to the room, so the delivery needs the facility name, the building or entrance, the room number, and the resident's full name. Keep it compact and low on fragrance for a shared room. A short line like "Just wanted you to know I am thinking of you" is often the part that gets read more than once.

I took a call once from a man whose mother had dementia, and he was worried flowers would just confuse her. What I told him is what I will tell you. Send something she would know from her own kitchen window, roses, daisies, a little lavender, in a stable container that will not tip. Familiar does more than fancy in those rooms, and a thinking of you bunch she half-remembers is still a good afternoon.

Marking a parent's ninetieth, or a long marriage, from the other side of the country is its own quiet ache. You want the flowers to stand in for you at a table you cannot get to, and you do not want them looking like an afterthought.

An eightieth or a ninetieth on this hillside is usually someone who has owned the same house outright for forty years and has firm opinions about flowers, so this is no moment for the cheapest bunch on the page. If it is going to a home, the recipient is almost certainly there, since so many of Bayview's residents are retired or work from a study with a Pittwater view. If it is going to a retirement village, send it during business hours so reception can take it through.

The stems are where the real choice sits for an older recipient.

Roses read beautifully for an eightieth or a ninetieth, but in a warm, air-conditioned room they soften inside a week. Carnations and lisianthus get unfairly dismissed, and they will outlast roses by days in that exact room, holding their shape long after the party is cleared away. And keep the vase off the north-facing sill, because half the homes here are built around a Pittwater view and the sun through that glass fades a red rose to pink in a couple of days. For a long marriage I would build around both, the roses for the romance, the carnations and the right position to keep the arrangement standing the following weekend.

Plenty of the orders we take to Bayview do not fit a neat occasion. You heard someone is unwell, or you simply want a parent to know you are thinking of them. You do not need to land on a category for that.

If you are not sure, leave the choosing to the florist. That is what Sarah did at the top of this page, two sympathy orders, both left to us, both right. For a grieving home or a quiet "thinking of you," I would put a florist's choice in soft whites and greens in their hands. They will pick the best of what came in fresh that morning, which is almost always better than anything chosen blind from a screen.