Blacks Beach Flowers Delivered Today

It's their birthday, you can't be there, and you want the flowers in their hands. Send to their house and put their mobile in the notes, so the florist can reach them if nobody answers the door. With six kilometres of beach out the front, a Blacks Beach birthday can easily move outdoors.

Found out how far a beach birthday wanders in 2008, at Cabarita Beach. A 40th birthday bunch for a house on Tweed Coast Road, nobody home, and a neighbour pointing at the beach. I found the party on the sand and walked the length of it in work shoes, holding gerberas. A girl of about six asked if I was the entertainment. I said no. She looked let down.

If it's a big one and you're sending the Bright Bunch & White Wine, it's water first, wine second, and that's worth a line on the card. A cut stem ages roughly twice as fast with each ten degrees of warmth, and a bunch left on a sunny trestle through a party pays for it in the vase.

Someone has died and you're sorting flowers between phone calls. Service or home, decide that first. In our experience funeral flowers reach the director ahead of the service, at Newhaven Funerals on Harbour Road or Whitsunday Funerals on Shakespeare Street, so the notes need the name of the person who has died and the service time. For a morning service, order the day before.

Sympathy flowers for the home can go today or a week on. Flowers don't change what happened. People send them anyway, and the cards get kept. On the card, "Thinking of you all, wish I could be there" is enough.

Anna's pick: the Pink Rose Sheath. It lies flat on the casket, and roses hold beautifully in a cool chapel. Some traditions have their own colour rules, so if you're unsure, ask the director.

Someone did you a favour: had the kids for the afternoon, fed the dog, drove your mum to an appointment. Thank-you flowers work like a tip. Small favour, a bunch. Big favour, a bunch with chocolates. Our bestseller since about 2013 has been the Australian Natives Bunch, and it suits a thank-you well.

Anna, on why natives go the distance

Natives are woody and they drink hard; a protea can empty a vase in a few days, so top it up daily. In a warm house, leucadendron goes ten days or more in my experience. If the protea leaves turn black, the flower is pulling sugar out of them. The head is fine.

Not every order fits a heading. A new baby at the Mater, a get well for someone just home from Mackay Base, or no reason beyond a friend you haven't called in months. Anna has a view on that.

Keep it low on scent and easy to live with. Chrysanthemums and gerberas carry next to no fragrance and drop no staining pollen, so they suit a room with a newborn or someone resting. That's why I'd pick the 3 Gerberas In A Vase: no scent to speak of, and the vase comes with it.