Beechboro keeps catching us off guard. Last month, Lisa ordered from the UK - the actual UK - sending birthday flowers to Beechboro. "So easy to use," she wrote, "absolutely beautiful, arrived on day requested." That's when it hit me again. We get more international orders to Beechboro than suburbs three times its size. This quiet patch between Morley and Midland, flight paths overhead, Reid Highway running through, somehow connects to everywhere.
The suburb's bigger than it looks on paper. Our Perth florists explained it years ago - locals from Lockridge, Kiara, Bennett Springs, they all say Beechboro when asked where they're from. It's become this catch-all for Perth's eastern sprawl. Makes sense why someone in London searching for flower delivery would land on Beechboro. It's the landmark everyone knows, even from 14,000 kilometres away.
Perth's eastern suburbs were this blind spot for us for ages. We had the western suburbs sorted, the coastal strip from Scarborough to Fremantle humming along nicely. But the east? Different beast entirely. More families, bigger blocks, people who'd lived there forever mixed with new arrivals who'd bought near the airport for work. The demographic was completely different from what we'd assumed sitting in our NSW office.
Our Beechboro and eastern Perth partners operate differently than the Claremont crowd. They're not doing $300 architectural arrangements for Peppermint Grove mansions. They're doing honest flowers for honest people. 70th Birthday bunches for nan in Bennett Springs. New baby flowers for the young family in Kiara. Sympathy arrangements that need to travel to Midland or Guildford.
These florists understand the unique challenges of the area. The summer heat that hits different away from the ocean breeze. The winter mornings when fog rolls in from the Swan Valley. They know which flowers cope with air conditioning because everyone out east runs it hard. They've learned which blooms survive the drive from their shop to Beechboro when it's 42 degrees and the car feels like an oven.
What impressed me most was their delivery knowledge. Beechboro's not a grid like the newer suburbs. Streets curve, courts appear from nowhere, house numbers that make zero sense. Our partners there don't rely on GPS alone. They know that certain streets are actually in Lockridge despite having Beechboro postcodes. They understand the estate near Bennett Springs that everyone thinks is Beechboro. It's hyperlocal knowledge that matters when you're trying to deliver fresh flowers before they wilt.
Here's something I rarely mention. Before Lily's Florist, before the flower shop in Kingscliff, we had two other online businesses running simultaneously. The organic gift business, the baby bottle empire that exploded when BPA became a thing. We were juggling three businesses, a new baby, renovating a shop, all while living in a tiny coastal town where everyone knew everyone's business.
The stress nearly broke us. Valentine's Day 2008, I'm eight months pregnant, we've got baby bottles to the ceiling in our villa, flower orders coming thick and fast, the organic website crashing from traffic. Andrew's trying to fix the site while I'm taking phone orders for flowers, Asha's crawling around the shop pulling things off shelves. Complete chaos.
But that chaos taught us focus. By 2009, we'd sold the other businesses, went all-in on flowers. Best decision we ever made. That same focus is why we can nail suburbs like Beechboro now. We're not trying to be everything. Just flowers, done properly, through locals who know their patch.
Simple process, proven results. Order before 2PM weekdays for same day Beechboro delivery. Fresh flowers, local florists, drivers who know every confusing court and crescent.