Same Day Flower Delivery to Cremorne QLD

It's their birthday and they're at work, which in Cremorne is the likelier bet (there are only a few houses here). Put the business name, their full name and a mobile in the notes, because three roller doors are three chances to get it wrong. Birthday flowers go to a workplace as easily as a house, and there's a range for him if the birthday boy is in overalls.

I learnt the roller-door lesson in 2007, taking a fortieth-birthday bunch to a panel shop in the Chinderah industrial estate on the Tweed. I tried two wrong doors first, then stood in the third holding lilies, Asha on my hip, the compressor drowning me out, until a bloke in overalls noticed us. Different river, same kind of street.

Anna's call: mind the engines. Running engines give off ethylene, and carnations that would last a fortnight in a quiet office curl their petals within days beside one. Chrysanthemums don't care at all, so near the workshop floor, lean toward them.

A colleague has lost someone, and the crew wants to send something. Funeral or home first, really. Funeral flowers need the funeral home's name, Mackay Funerals on Alfred Street for one, and the service time; at a Mount Bassett Cemetery graveside, a wreath or sheath lies flat on the lawn. Flowers for the home are often kinder a week later, when everyone else has gone and the house goes quiet. Families told me that for years on the phones.

On the card, "Thinking of you all, from everyone at work" is plenty. A card fixes nothing, and families keep every one.

Anna, on lilies in a Mackay summer

Lily buds open one after another, so the bunch keeps changing for days. Heat brings them on faster, and in a Mackay summer they're at their best a day or two after they arrive, which is perfect for the family home. Pick each flower off as it fades, because a dying bloom gives off ethylene and hurries the buds behind it.

They're in hospital, you can't get there, and all you've got is a ward number off a text message. Hospital or home first: if they're due out in a day or two, send get well flowers to the house instead. For the Mater on Willetts Road or Mackay Base Hospital on Bridge Road, the patient's full name and ward go in the notes; in our experience hospital flowers stop at the ward desk and the staff take them through. "Rest up, we're all thinking of you" on the card says enough.

Go boxed. A boxed arrangement sits in wet foam, so nobody on the ward hunts for a vase, and it keeps drinking if it goes home with them later in the week.

A thank-you, a well done, welcome back, sorry about the forklift: plenty of workplace orders aren't birthdays or funerals. Thank-you flowers and celebration flowers cover most of it, and Anna has an easy answer for the rest, chocolates included (fair warning, those won't make it to the car park).

Send the Native Arrangement With Chocolates. Natives are among the toughest flowers going in a Queensland summer, and the woody stems dry and keep for months on a shelf once the rest is done.