Sending Flowers to Canberra Hospital: What Happens When They Arrive

They go to Main Reception in Building 5, on the ground floor off Hospital Road. That is as far as the florist gets. A ward clerk collects them from there and a nurse or one of the volunteers in the purple shirts walks them the last stretch, usually within a few hours of the handover.

Which means the whole thing turns on one line of the order form, and it is not the line most people worry about.

Garran is the referral centre for around 550,000 people across southern NSW on top of the ACT itself, so a lot of these orders start in Wagga, Bega, Cooma, Goulburn and a long way past that. If you are one of them, you are not going to be in the room today. Flowers are a poor stand-in for sitting next to the bed, and they are also the only thing that can get there this afternoon. Both of those are true at once and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Almost none of what goes wrong is the florist's doing, and nearly all of it is fixable before you press the button. Below: the chain, the wards that take flowers and the wards that do not, and what to send. If you already have the ward and just want to order, start here and skip the rest.

The safe one Florists Choice Get Well Arrangement $81.75 Box format, so the ward has nothing to do with it. Write "hospital delivery, no lilies" in the notes and the florist builds around that. Or see the whole

Two mistakes stall nearly every hospital delivery, and neither is the florist's.

The first is ordering while the person is still in Emergency, which at Garran means 147 treatment spaces and no fixed bed. There is nowhere for an arrangement to go and nobody whose job it is to hold it. Wait for the ward.

The second is leaving the ward field blank. "Canberra Hospital, Garran" is 672 beds spread across fifteen numbered buildings, and the ward field is the thing that routes them. A name is not an address.

Deliberately ward-level, which is why a blanket yes or no is wrong. The building and level column below is from the published Canberra Health Services ward list. The verdict column is ours, from what our florists have seen on hospital runs around the country. Treat it as guidance and let the ward overrule it. If the ward is not listed, ring it.

Most flowers at Garran go to Building 1. Level 7 of Building 5 is fine, Level 5 is not, and Level 2 of Building 3 wants a phone call first. The one that catches people out is Building 1, Level 9, where gastroenterology and infectious diseases share a floor and get opposite answers.

If the ward is a no, chocolates get through where flowers do not, and that is what our gift hampers are for.

Outlasts the stay Rose & Carnation Arrangement $89.95 Carnations run two to three weeks. This one is still going when they go home.

When you are unsure Gorgeous White Arrangement $89.95 White reads right across nearly every background. Useful when you do not know theirs.

You are choosing from photographs, for a room you have not seen, for a bedside table you cannot picture. So start with the thing that has nothing to do with taste.

Four of ours that fit a ward, with Anna's reason for each. If you would rather not choose at all, take the first one. The native at the end carries 335 reviews, more than anything else we sell into a hospital.

For a birth, address it to the mother, by her full name. The baby is not admitted under a name a ward clerk can match, and that one line is the commonest cause of a maternity delivery that does not land. The boy version and the teddy add-ons are in the new baby range, and the longer-lived natives sit on our native flowers page.

Then the card, which is the part people agonise over longest for the fewest words. Keep it short. "Thinking of you, no need to reply" does more work in a ward than three sentences of effort. For a birth, "Congratulations. Sleep when you can." If you do not know how serious it is, "You are in my thoughts" has never once been the wrong thing. The flowers go in the bin around day ten. The card ends up in a drawer and stays there for years, which is the bit nobody tells you when you are stuck on what to write.

Order by 2pm on a weekday or 10am on a Saturday for same day. No Sunday delivery. Two things about timing nobody tells you.

Day two beats day one, unless it is a birth. Day one is paperwork, obs, two visitors at a time, someone wheeled off for a scan. By day two there is space on the bedside table and they can read the card. If you think you have missed the moment, you have not.

And if the person is likely to be home within a day, do not send to the ward at all, send it to the house, because a ward clerk will hold an arrangement for a patient who has already gone down to the discharge lounge in Building 12 and it will find them in the end, but "in the end" is not what you paid for, and it is a worse arrival than flowers already on the kitchen bench when they walk in the door.

That advice costs us a same-day hospital order most weeks, and I would give it again every time. I will take the awkward no on a Friday afternoon. The Saturday morning apology costs everybody more. Home deliveries take the wrapped bunches anyway, which are better value and the recipient already owns a vase. Thinking of you and flower arrangements run on the same cutoff.

One note on the last one. Clare Holland House is the ACT's palliative inpatient unit, and visiting there is built around the family, with the timetable bending to them. The ward restrictions that govern the rest of the hospital do not apply here. Flowers are welcome in palliative wards, and the staff understand exactly what they are for.

After you order you will not hear much, and that is the bit that gets people. No tracking number, and the person at the other end often does not ring for a day or two because they are asleep, or on a drip, or their phone is flat in a drawer. The silence is normal. The gesture has already done its work in that room whether they have managed to tell you about it yet or not. If you want to know it landed, ring us on 1300 360 469 and we will find out for you.