Flowers Delivered to Gerroa, No Shop to Leave Them At

Half the reason to send flowers here is to reach someone you cannot get to yourself, at a house you are not standing in front of. A lot of Gerroa orders are that: a thinking-of-you bunch, or a little hamper on the bench, timed to land when the family actually arrives.

The one thing that changes the order here is timing, not the flowers. The town is fullest over the January holidays and the Easter and Christmas breaks, and emptiest on a plain June midweek, so in our experience the safest run is a Thursday or Friday ahead of a weekend, when someone is there to bring the bunch inside. A short line does the job on the card, something like "thinking of you, see you Saturday."

Send the hardy stems to an arrival, not the delicate ones. If it is going to sit a day or two before anyone walks in, that rules out the soft heads. Natives, chrysanthemums and proteas will still look sharp when the door finally opens. I would not put a soft rose or a hydrangea into a warm, shut house and hope it holds.

A fair few couples down here have a place they escape to for a milestone, a quiet weekend away from the city, not a party. You are marking the years, and you want it to be there and looking right when they arrive, not fading by Sunday lunch.

The reviews that come back on romance orders are almost always about how long the flowers held, not the first photo. That is the thing to build for. Most people reach for a dozen red roses on an anniversary. Anna would weigh that up.

In a warm coastal room, tight roses can open fast and be past their best in three or four days. If the couple is down for a long weekend, I would go a mixed arrangement with lisianthus and a few natives worked through, or a good anniversary arrangement in a box. Same romance, twice the run.

A lot of the birthdays we send here are for a parent who has retired to the coast, ordered by an adult child back in Sydney or Wollongong who cannot make the drive down for the day. The flowers stand in for you at the table. "Happy 70th Mum, wish we were down there" is plenty on the card.

For a permanent home the address is simple, a house number off Crooked River Road, so a same-day seventieth birthday arrangement is straightforward once it is in before 2pm.

For an older recipient I lean away from anything that needs work. A bunch that has to be cut, fed and arranged is a job, not a gift, when you are on your own. Something built in a vase or a box, low and full, that they can put down and leave, is the kinder send. From what our florists have seen, those are the ones that get a photo back a week later, still going.

Plenty of orders do not slot into a neat category, and that is fine. You do not need a reason to send flowers to someone at Gerroa, on the same Seven Mile Beach sand Sally Fitzgibbons grew up surfing before she made the world tour.

Anna's pick for Gerroa

If you are letting us choose, I would go a native bunch nearly every time. Half the people who buy here bought for the national park on their doorstep, and a bunch of banksia, wax and gum reads that landscape back to them. It also happens to be the toughest thing on the list, which on this coast is the whole game. Tell us it is for Gerroa and the florist will build to suit the run.