Burwood VIC Flowers, Same Day for a 90th or a Funeral

Nothing you send is going to be equal to what has happened. It still has to arrive at the right place at the right hour. Three addresses here: the family home, the funeral director, with the brand name and the service time on the order, or an existing grave at Burwood Cemetery. I ran flowers into funeral homes on the Tweed from 2006 to 2010. The ones that went astray had no service time on them. A quarter of this suburb has Chinese ancestry, which moves the colour more than the budget does. On the card there are no right words, and "thinking of you and your family" is enough.

Anna, qualified florist

In most Jewish families flowers are not sent at all, so if the house is sitting shiva a fruit basket is the right gift. Everywhere else here, white and yellow chrysanthemum together is read correctly, and it holds a fortnight where a rose gives a week. Red is the one to leave out, because at a funeral it reads as celebrating.

Someone in your family is graduating and you will not be in the room. Deakin's Burwood campus is its biggest, and on ceremony day the graduate is in a robe, in a queue, hands full. A campus building is the worst place a bunch can sit. Send it home the night before. Ordering from overseas, our 2pm is the trap: mid-morning in Shanghai is already afternoon here.

A graduation bunch gets held, photographed and put down again. So it wants long straight stems and a wrap you can carry in one arm. Nothing heavy, nothing scented, nothing that sheds on a gown. Graduation flowers are built for that day.

Some of these orders go to a bedside where the person will not remember by Thursday who sent the flowers. Send them anyway. An eightieth or a ninetieth at one of the three homes needs the wing and the resident's full name, because it lands at a reception desk and staff tend to carry it through. A share house near the campus needs a mobile number and a safe place. Nobody is there at four on a Tuesday. On the card, "just wanted you to know I am thinking of you" is plenty.

June to August is the best flower buying of the year in Victoria. Almost nobody uses it. Tulips, ranunculus and stock come good at once, and the cool band gives a rose twelve days indoors, which on a bedside is twelve mornings of somebody noticing it. Thinking of you flowers go further in July.

None of those quite fit. Here the format decides more than the flower, and Anna would pick the container first.

A boxed arrangement in white and yellow, no lilies. Chrysanthemum for the backbone, lisianthus for the soft weight, a little gum for structure. Those three fade at different rates, so day six looks nothing like day one, which counts where somebody walks past it daily. It stands without anyone hunting a vase and it will not tip on a reception counter. Under sixty buys a small one that lands right.