Same Day Flower Delivery to Coalcliff, Even on the Drive

It's their birthday in Coalcliff and you're somewhere else. The main risk with a house is nobody being home, so put a mobile number in the notes and our florist can ring ahead.

I learned that at Fingal Head in 2007, the same sort of place, a handful of streets with the ocean right there. Nobody answered the door, and a neighbour sent me down to the lighthouse, where the birthday girl was sitting on the rocks with a thermos. I carried Asha down in her capsule (not impressed by the wind, Asha I mean), and a mobile number on that order would have saved us both the walk. Start with our best-selling birthday flowers, or the range picked for Mum.

Gerbera stems are hollow, so if a head on the Gerbera Bunch + Teddy + Birthday Balloon starts to nod, recut two centimetres off the bottom and stand it in shallow warm water for an hour. It comes back up.

You remembered (good), and now it's just a question of where. If they work in Wollongong, flowers at the office get seen by everyone; at home in Coalcliff, they're waiting when the day is done. Either way one of our partner florists near the address makes them on the delivery day, so what turns up is a florist's work, properly wrapped. Have a look through our anniversary flowers, or go straight to the roses.

Anna's call: 3 Wrapped Red Roses look generous in a slim vase. The outer petals can look a little tired when they arrive. Florists call them guard petals; they protected the bloom on the trip, so peel them off and the rose underneath is fresh. Then keep the vase back from a sunny window.

Someone has died, and you're the one sorting the flowers from a distance, which is its own kind of hard (I took a lot of those calls in the shop years, and the voice on the other end was often a bit lost). For the service, send them to the funeral director; in our experience the director takes them to the church or chapel with everything else, on time. White Lady Funerals at Bulli is one of the funeral directors nearest Coalcliff, and a Catholic Mass may well be at St Michael's on Lawrence Hargrave Drive, Thirroul. Put the director and the service time in the notes, and see our funeral flowers.

For the house, an arrangement that comes in its own container saves the family hunting for a vase, and there are several among our sympathy flowers for home. "Thinking of you all. Here whenever you need." is enough on the card. It's a strange thing to be choosing flowers for, and it still matters to them that you did.

Anna, on the colour

Whites, creams and soft greens. Bright reads wrong in a house full of people the week of a funeral. The Gorgeous White Arrangement does the job, and kept out of direct sun the whites stay clean longest.

Plenty of orders come with no occasion, or with one and no idea what the person likes. The Australian Natives Bunch is the one we've sent most, everywhere, for years. Anna has a view on why.

What goes into the bunch depends on the market that morning, but proteas hold their heads for a week and a half or more in an ordinary lounge room, and leucadendron goes two weeks or longer. Split the bottom of the woody stems so they can drink, and top the vase up often, because proteas are thirsty. They also take a breezy deck or an open window better than the soft stems do. That's why they're my pick when nobody knows what the person likes, and the same care suits all our native flowers.