Flower Delivery Dunlop ACT Today, Meadows to Jarramlee

It's their birthday, you're at work or three states away, and they're probably out too. A 40th or Mum's birthday, the question is the same: where do the flowers wait?

December 2007, I had a birthday bunch for a house off Leisure Drive in Banora Point. Nobody home, and the only shade in the yard was under the Hills Hoist, so that's where it went. The birthday woman rang the shop that night laughing, she'd found it hiding under her husband's work shirts, which I'd never have thought of as a hiding spot but there you go. Dunlop has Lance Hill Avenue, named for Lance Hill, the man who invented the Hills Hoist. Tell us in the notes where the shade is.

Cut stems out of a vase live on the water already inside them, and the petals spend it fastest in sun and heat. Under a carport, the Rose, Gerbera & Lilies Bunch keeps its looks for an afternoon. On a west-facing step in January the outer petals go papery at the edges before anyone gets home.

A baby's arrived and all you've got is a text and a blurry photo. If mum and bub are still in hospital, it's most likely Centenary Hospital for Women and Children in Garran or North Canberra Hospital in Bruce, so find out which one, and for hospital flowers put the hospital and the ward in the notes. In our experience most families are home within days, so if you're unsure, send it to the house. A card idea: "Welcome to the world, little one."

Anna, on a room with a newborn in it

Keep new baby flowers unscented and free of loose pollen. Scent fills a small room fast, ward or nursery, and loose pollen ends up on the bassinet sheet. Gerberas carry neither, and 3 Gerberas In A Vase arrive already in water, so nobody hunts for scissors with a baby on one shoulder.

Someone's died, and the notice gives a time at the Bluegum Chapel at William Cole Funerals on Nettlefold Street in Belconnen, or at Norwood Park in Mitchell. Funeral flowers go to the service, with the service time and the full name of the person who died in the notes; sympathy flowers for the home go to the family in Dunlop. Flowers are a small thing next to what's happened, and they're still what people remember arriving. On the card, "Thinking of you all, no need to reply" is plenty.

Anna's take: a sheath or a wreath is built to rest on the casket or stand on its own easel, so there's no tall vase to tip when someone brushes past. On the kitchen table at home, whites and creams stay clean longest in a cool spot out of the sun, and a Canberra house in winter is about as kind to them as it gets.

Some orders are a thank-you to a teacher at Charnwood-Dunlop School at the end of the year, a thank-you to the neighbour who fed the cat, or flowers for no reason at all. None of them needs an occasion to justify it, and Anna has one pick that covers all three.

The Blue Mist Arrangement sits in its own mirrored cube with the water held in the foam, so it suits a classroom desk or a neighbour's kitchen bench with no vase in sight. Top it up every couple of days, because foam that dries right out won't take water back properly.