Flower Delivery to Capital Hill and Parliament House

A birthday, a new job, a thank-you to the office: they work in Parliament House and you want the flowers to find them.

Back in 2008 I carried a birthday bunch into the Tweed Shire Council offices on Tumbulgum Road, Murwillumbah, Asha on my hip, and got as far as the front counter (fair enough, I was in thongs). The flowers went upstairs without me. Parliament House is that, plus a security scanner, which is why the notes below matter.

Anna's take

An arrangement is built into wet foam in its own container, so it goes straight down next to the keyboard with nothing to find. That foam dries out faster in conditioned air than it looks, so press a fingertip into it each morning and give it a slow pour of water whenever the top feels dry. A hand-tied bunch is lovely too, if the office keeps a vase.

Sitting weeks fill the hotels near the hill with people whose families are somewhere else, and an anniversary doesn't wait for Parliament to stop sitting. Flowers from home waiting in the room say what a late phone call can't.

Hotels like Hotel Realm in Barton tend to hold flowers at reception until the guest is back. Check the sitting calendar first, though: outside sitting weeks most senators and members are home in their electorates, and anything sent to them on the hill waits until they're back.

An Oriental lily will fill a small, sealed hotel room, and the scent builds as each bud opens. Lovely if they love it. Most imported roses carry almost no scent at all and sit quietly on the bedside table.

A funeral, or a colleague back at work after a death in the family, sooner than anyone expected.

For a service at St Andrew's on State Circle or St Christopher's Cathedral in Forrest, the start time in the notes gets the flowers there ahead of the family. For the colleague, their office or their home both work. On the card, "Thinking of you and your family" is enough, and from a team, "With deepest sympathy, from all of us" says it.

Anna's call: whites and creams with soft green, for the church or the office. White lilies open bud by bud, so what goes home after the service keeps going for a week or more.

Plenty of orders into Parliament House don't fit a heading: a good week, a long night, a thank-you nobody else will think to send.

Anna, if you're stuck

Send the Australian Native Arrangement. Banksia and grevillea are woody stems with tough leaves, mostly in greens and golds, and florists often mix in protea and leucadendron, their South African cousins from the same plant family. All four hold up in dry, air-conditioned rooms, and leucadendron can go a month in a cool room. In a building where most colours seem to belong to somebody, green and gold belong to everyone.