Bunbury Flowers, and Where They Really Come From

When you are ordering sympathy flowers from a distance, the flowers are the easy part. The hard part is being unable to hand them over yourself, and the quiet worry that from this far away you will somehow get it wrong.

The first thing to sort is where they should go, and the two do different work. A tribute at the service is the public goodbye, sent to the funeral director with the service date and the family name; flowers to the home are for the family still in it, a way of saying you are holding them. From what our florists have seen around Bunbury, tributes for a service are timed to arrive the morning of, not the day before, because the region's only crematorium and the funeral homes clustered along Spencer Street move a lot of pieces around, and a florist who knows that street knows which door is which when the timing is tight. A short line on the card is enough: "Thinking of you all" or "With love and deepest sympathy" carries it, and there is no wrong choice here, only a kind one.

Anna, qualified florist

There are a couple of customs worth knowing here. In an Italian Catholic family, chrysanthemums are correct and expected at the funeral itself, but never send them as an everyday gesture to the home, where they read as a funeral flower and nothing else. In a Greek Orthodox family, the memorial does not end with the service; there are gatherings at forty days, three months, six months and the year, and white flowers to the church for each. White is the safe colour across the Italian, Greek and Filipino Catholic families that make up much of Bunbury; red is the one to leave off. For the service itself, a native tribute in WA's own kangaroo paw and banksia holds through a warm afternoon at the graveside far better than a soft-headed flower, which can collapse before the service is over.

A hospital admission throws everyone off, and what stings when you are far away is picturing them on the ward without you there. You want to send something that says you are thinking of them without adding to the fuss.

Bunbury makes one part easy: a 190-bed public hospital and the 145-bed private St John of God share the one campus, on the corner of Bussell Highway and Robertson Drive, so a single address covers whichever bed your person is in. Put their full name and the ward in the delivery notes. From what our florists have seen, get well flowers go to the ward reception, staff log them, and they reach the bedside within a few hours. The private hospital tends to keep afternoon visiting hours, so a delivery earlier in the day is usually waiting by the time family arrive. The same campus runs the maternity unit, so a new baby gift follows the same rule: address it to the mother by name, not the baby, and add the ward.

Not every delivery to that campus is a happy one. St John of God runs Granada, the region's only palliative care unit, and if that is where your flowers are going, keep the note gentle and let the staff place them; in our experience they are used to it and will put them where they will be seen.

One question comes up more than any other with hospital orders, and Anna has a firm view on it.

If it is a day procedure, send to the house, not the hospital. Flowers sent to a bed the patient has already left just chase them around. For a longer stay, keep it small and unscented. No lilies in a shared room, the pollen and the perfume are too much in a closed ward. A compact posy of chrysanthemum or spray carnation sits on a crowded bedside table and lasts the week without help.

When someone you love is in residential care, it is the visits you cannot make that weigh on you. Flowers are a way of being in the room when you cannot be there yourself.

Bunbury has seven aged care homes, from Regis and the Bethanie facilities through to Ocean Star, and in our experience they all take deliveries the same way, at reception rather than a resident's room. Put your person's full name, and their room or wing if you know it, in the notes. From what our florists have seen, a staff member walks it down and often uses it as a reason to stop in for a chat, which is half the value of sending it. Flowers on the sill also tell a resident they are still thought of, which for someone whose visitors have thinned out is the point. A plain thinking-of-you gesture lands as well here as any occasion does, and the card can be just as plain; a line as small as "thinking of you this week" is enough.

For a room in care, longevity matters more than size. A big showy bunch crowds a small space and dies faster in a warm room. I would send something low and long-lasting: carnation, spray chrysanthemum, a few native stems that still look right in a fortnight. If it is a milestone, an 80th or a 90th, the flowers should last as long as the cards and the phone calls keep coming, not fold by the weekend.

Plenty of orders do not fit a funeral, a hospital or a home in care. A thank you, an apology, a birthday you nearly forgot, a hard week you cannot fix but do not want to ignore.

Tell the florist the weather, not just the occasion. A Bunbury summer afternoon rules out anything soft-headed, so if you are leaving the choice to the florist, ask for a seasonal arrangement built to last in dry heat. That usually means natives or something chrysanthemum-based, and it usually outlasts whatever you would have picked from a photo. If you would rather hand the whole thing over, florist's choice lets them build from whatever came in strongest that morning.