It's their birthday and you've no idea whether they'll be home. Nearly half the homes in Broadmeadow are rented and the crowd is young, so on a weekday your person is probably at work, which is where I'd send the flowers (I lost count of the birthday calls that started with "she'll be at work, won't she?"). An office address with their name and floor finds them, and for home, a mobile in the notes usually means a quick call about where the flowers were left. A work address suits a friend's birthday and a bloke who'd never buy his own equally well.

For a desk, flowers that come in their own vase are the smart choice. The Simply Stylish With Chocolates & Vase arrives standing in water, so nobody at the office has to hunt one down and the stems never sit dry under the air conditioning.

You've read the notice: Meighans on Lambton Road, or a Mass at St Laurence O'Toole on Broadmeadow Road. Decide whether the flowers go to the service or to the family home a few days later. For a morning service, order the day before and add the name and the start time to the notes. Nothing you send is the right size for losing someone, and you send something anyway. "With love, thinking of you all" is plenty on the card.

Anna on timing a sheath

A sheath is a long spray that lies flat on the casket, most of its stems out of water, so the florists I worked with made it the morning of the service. A day early and it goes soft in a back room. For the house afterwards, send flowers that sit in water; they keep going a week or more.

Someone's in hospital and you can't get there. If they're due out soon, send get well flowers to the house instead. For hospital delivery from Broadmeadow it's usually John Hunter or Newcastle Private next door, so say which, plus the ward and bed. We know hospital reception from the other side, believe me. In 2007 we pulled up at Murwillumbah Hospital with Asha screaming in the back, the flowers due at reception in five minutes, 37 degrees outside and not a park anywhere, oh the anxiety. On the card: "Thinking of you. See you soon."

Anna on shared rooms: oriental lilies are glorious in a private room. In a shared ward the next bed didn't choose the scent, so go chrysanthemums or gerberas, which have none to speak of. Wards tend to be air-conditioned, and gerberas want fresh water every couple of days in that dry air or the necks start to bend.

Plenty of orders come with no occasion and no clue about the person's taste: a new job, a rough week, a friend who's just moved into a rental off Brunker Road with bare walls. Anna has a view on these.

Pastels are the safest guess I know, and I don't say that about much. The Beautiful Pastels Bunch from our flower bunches suits twenty-five or eighty-five, because soft colours sit with whatever's already in the room.