Same-Day Flowers to Ellenbrook, Ahead of the Heat

A new baby means the house is already full, of visitors, of casseroles, of things that need somewhere to go. Anything you send has to earn the bench space it takes up.

If you are sending new baby flowers to the maternity ward at St John of God Midland rather than the house, they go to the main reception first and the ward staff carry them through. Put the mother's full name on the order, not the baby's, and a day or two into the stay beats day one. From what our florists find, on day one nobody in the room knows where anything should sit yet.

On what actually survives a ward, Anna has a rule.

Skip the lilies, or if someone has their heart set on the look, ask for the pollen-free Asiatic kind, which carry no pollen and no scent. Most wards will wave standard lilies through, but the pollen stains and the perfume is too much for a small room and a newborn. Nothing heavily fragrant, nothing that drops petals. A low box arrangement holds its water and does not tip when a tired parent moves it off the tray table, and carnations with a few gerberas will still look right in a week. A hand-tied bunch in a jug looks lovely for a day, then somebody has to go and find a vase, and nobody in that room has a spare hand.

When someone has been on a mine site for a fortnight, the bunch waiting at home is doing more than it looks. It marks the gap. It says someone counted the days.

The trap is sending them to land on the Monday when the roster does not finish until Friday. Four days on a kitchen bench in an empty house through a Perth February, and they are spent before the reunion they were bought for. Put the homecoming date in the notes and we hold the run for the morning of, not the order date. The same goes for any thinking of you order heading to a house that is empty on a roster.

Order the welcome-home bunch in bold colour, not white. I took a lot of these calls from the Pilbara, and the senders always reached for something soft and elegant. Wrong instinct. A homecoming is loud, it is relief, it is bright. And the bright stems are the hardy ones anyway: gerberas, chrysanthemums, a few natives that do not flinch at a forty-degree afternoon. The soft elegant stuff is exactly what a hot doorstep kills first.

Ordering flowers for a funeral is one of those jobs you do half-numb, phone in hand, head somewhere else. Flowers do not fix a death, and everyone sending them knows it. You send them anyway, because a bunch at the door says what you cannot get on a plane to say.

Sympathy orders to Ellenbrook split two ways, and the split matters more here than most places. Condolences to the family home, or flowers to the service.

There are two funeral homes at 36 Main Street. One is Unit 10, the other is Shop 10, two reception desks a few metres apart. An order that just says "36 Main Street" can land at the wrong one. Give us the unit or shop number and the provider's name and it goes to the right desk. For a condolence delivery to the home, three days is the usual window, and a card line as plain as "Thinking of you and your family" is enough. For the service itself, confirm the date and the exact unit before it goes.

Anna on choosing the stems

For the home, you want something that asks nothing of a grieving family. No heavy scent in a closed room, and water that lasts without daily fussing. Chrysanthemums and natives over lilies for that reason. The service is different, because there the flowers are seen, so the standing arrangement carries more white and more structure. One quiet caution from the phones: Sikh callers used to ring unsure whether flowers were even right. Often they are not. At an Antim Sanskaar the flowers do not carry the rite the way they would at a Catholic Mass, so the safe move is to ask the family first. A fruit hamper to the home after the ceremony has never once been taken the wrong way.

Plenty of Ellenbrook orders do not fit a tidy occasion. A thank you, a thinking-of-you, a bunch for a parent in one of the two Aegis aged-care homes here in the suburb. That is most of them, honestly.

If you want my pick for the everyday ones, a bright mixed bunch built around gerberas does more work than a dozen roses. The gerberas are Perth-grown, so they reach the cool room without two days on an interstate truck behind them, and that head start is the real edge in this heat. One thing the photo will not tell you: a gerbera only holds its head up if the florist has wired each stem. The good ones do, every time, and asking for a bright mixed bunch gives the florist room to use whatever came in strongest that morning.

An aged-care room changes the brief. Send a box, not a hand-tie, so nothing tips on a crowded bedside table, and lean on carnations: long-lasting, low scent for a shared room, no pollen to drop. For someone living with dementia, send what they would know from their own garden, roses or daisies, ahead of anything that looks like a magazine cover.