Flower Delivery Bribie Island North Today, Canal or Villa

A 70th birthday up this end often means family flying in and a long table set up facing the water. In Banksia Beach the canal houses face the canal, so the living happens out the back and the front door is the quiet side. Put a mobile in the notes.

I found that out around 2008 with a 70th birthday bunch for a canal house in Mermaid Waters, on the Gold Coast. Right street, right number. I knocked and rang the bell for five minutes, then started writing a note for the letterbox, and heard a cheer from somewhere behind the house. All twenty of them were out on the pontoon. I had been knocking on the back of the party. The birthday girl took the flowers over the side gate and asked if I had come by boat.

Anna's pick: something low and wide. A tall vase on an outdoor table catches every gust off the water and goes over, usually into the salad. Low and wide sits still, and nobody has to talk around it. The best-selling birthday bunches are an easy place to start.

Someone on the island has lost a husband or a wife, and you are a long way from the funeral. Plenty of the sympathy flowers that go to Bribie are sent to the home in the days after the service, once the family has flown home. Put the village name and the villa number in the notes. In our experience, if nobody answers, the village office points the florist to the right door. Flowers do nothing about a funeral you could not get to. They still end up on the kitchen bench, and the card gets kept. On it, "Thinking of you this week" or "No need to reply to this" is plenty.

Anna, on colour for a house that is grieving

Whites, creams and soft greens. Bright reads wrong in that room, however kindly it was meant. White roses with a bit of eucalyptus were the combination I put together most for a house after a funeral: the gum drinks slowly and outlasts the roses by days, so there is still something green in the vase at the end of the second week. The white sympathy range is where to find it.

Bribie is where a lot of people go once they finally sell the family house. Siobhan and I did our own version in 2006, Drummoyne to Kingscliff with a baby on the way, so I know what the first fortnight looks like: boxes, no idea where the scissors are, and phone calls from people who think you have lost your mind. Congratulations flowers land well in that fortnight.

Moving week is when an arrangement beats a bunch every time. An arrangement is built into wet floral foam, a green block that holds water like a sponge, so it drinks from the minute it is set down on whatever bit of bench is clear. A bunch in its water pack holds for a day. After that the pack runs low, air gets into the cut ends and the heads start to droop while the vase is still in a box somewhere.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: the neighbour who fed the cat while they were away, the old workmate you have not rung in a year. Anna had a colour for these.

Orange. It is cheerful without shouting, it reads as neither romance nor sympathy, and on Bribie it keeps its colour even on a sunny windowsill facing the passage. Start with the orange flowers and you will not be wrong.