Flowers to Bomaderry: Six Aged Care Homes in One Small Postcode

Why Flowers to Bomaderry Sometimes Run on the River, Not the Road

Anna, qualified florist, fifteen years on the bench and three of them taking Shoalhaven orders off the phones

Bomaderry only exists because the railway needed somewhere to turn around. The turntable went in back in 1893, when this was the end of the South Coast line, and for decades the produce moved out through these yards toward Sydney. The flowers travel the other way now. They come down the Princes Highway from the Sydney market by refrigerated road, close to 160 kilometres, and reach the cool rooms across the river before the shop opens. That run costs you about a day of vase life against what a Sydney florist pulls off the market shelf that same morning. On a chrysanthemum you would never notice. On a hydrangea it shows by the third day.

Here is the part no other flower page will tell you. Bolong Road, where most of the workplace orders go, can flood from the wrong end. You would assume that happens when it rains. It does not. The water comes when the Shoalhaven River, kilometres downstream, rises and backs up Bomaderry Creek from the river side. The council has it mapped. Their modelling shows a one-in-a-hundred-year flood putting water over the floor of sixteen properties along that corridor, about $1.65 million in damage. It does not happen most years, and when it does not, none of this matters. The other quirk is the calendar: February and March are the wettest months here, not summer, and that damp autumn air is where grey mould, botrytis, gets a start on soft petals like roses and ranunculus before the recipient is home from work.

One more thing about this place, and it has nothing to do with delivery. There is a shrub that grows in the Bomaderry Creek gorge and nowhere else on Earth, the Bomaderry zieria. It cannot even set its own seed, so it comes back by suckering underground after a fire. You will never see it in a bunch. I just like that a working railway town has a flower all of its own, and the same stubbornness is why the native stems I send here shrug off a hot verandah.

Most of what leaves here goes to an aged care room or a hospital bedside, and that shapes what I would send. Chrysanthemums and carnations do the work: waxy, a fortnight or more in the vase, happy to sit near a nurses' station in a room where the person may not be up to changing the water themselves. Save the lilies for somewhere other than a ward. A bunch that lasts is worth more than a bunch that photographs well and folds by the third day.

From the Sydney Market to a Bomaderry Doorstep

There is no warehouse posting these out. Your order goes to a florist just up the road who buys at market, builds it that morning, and drives it across the river. It is the whole model, and it is why the flowers are hours old by the time they knock. A real person made it that morning.

* What happens to your order the moment it lands in the Lily's Florist network.

This corridor is not new to us. Back in 2008, when Siobhan and I were still cold-calling florists from the Kingscliff shop, the calls that kept coming in were for Bomaderry, for the streets near the bowling club, for the new estates off Moss Vale Road, and one of the first in the area to take our orders was Flamingo Florist over on Worrigee Street. Those confused calls are exactly what pushed us to set up a proper partner in the Shoalhaven rather than turning the work away. Nowra itself was one of the towns on our early list when we first mapped out where the network needed to reach, so this stretch of coast has been on our books almost from the start.

What Goes Wrong, and What We Changed

A while back a customer rang because we had missed the delivery window on an occasion order. Nothing was wrong with the flowers. The timing was, and for a birthday that lands on one day only, timing is the whole thing. Their order had sat behind three other stops on the run that afternoon. We changed the routing rule after that call. Time-sensitive occasion orders now go first in the run, ahead of everything that can safely wait a few hours. A late birthday stings. But a late funeral, or flowers that miss a hospital discharge, is the one that keeps you up at night, and that is the order the new rule protects first.

Here is the honest one for Bomaderry. Bolong Road can flood from the river end. The Shoalhaven rises kilometres downstream, backs up the creek, and pushes in from behind, so the road can go under while the sky above it stays clear. The industrial estates along it are exactly where the workplace orders go. It does not happen often. When the weather bureau flags a Shoalhaven flood, we would rather ring you before the flowers leave than send them toward a road that is about to close. Nobody enjoys that phone call. It still beats a bunch stranded on the wrong side of a closed road. That is the deal.

After You Order

Your order goes to a partner florist in or close to Bomaderry, working from the same Sydney market stock every florist in the region uses, made up in their cool room and driven to the door that day. You will get an email confirmation with the details. If you need to change the card message, update the address, or add a note about access, email [email protected] or call 1300 360 469 before the cutoff.

A note from Siobhan

The orders going into the aged care homes and the hospital are the ones I think about most, because you often will not hear back for a day or two. The recipient is tired, or on medication, or just not near their phone, and the quiet is easy to read as the flowers falling flat (they almost never have). Give it a day before you worry. The flowers have already done their work in that room, whether they have managed to tell you yet or not. And if something is genuinely off, ring us, not the florist, and you get me or Andrew on it, not a call centre script. Some of our florists have been with us fifteen years now. We chose them by hand, so it is on us to make it right.

If something does go wrong, call 1300 360 469, 7am to 6pm weekdays and 10am Saturdays. Not the florist directly. We sort it from here, and we would far rather hear about it the same day than read it in a review once there is nothing left to fix.

ABN: 17 830 858 659