Green Point Flowers: the Door, the Ward, and the Chapel

A death in the family splits the flower order in two. Something for the service, where the flowers are seen by everyone who comes and stand in for you in a room you might not make, and something quieter for the house.

Service flowers go to Greenway Chapel on Avoca Drive, and they have to be there before the service starts, not after. We ask for the date and time in the order notes so the florist can confirm the delivery against the funeral director's running sheet. Condolence flowers for the family go to the home instead, usually in the few days after. If there is a graveside service at Point Clare, wreaths and sheaths can go any time within the cemetery's hours. If you are not sure which you need, send them to the home; it is the gentler default. A short card, written by hand if you can, does more than a long one, and "with deepest sympathy to the whole family" is enough. The arrangement is gone in a fortnight; the card gets kept, sometimes for years.

Anna, qualified florist

White lilies, white roses and white chrysanthemums are the traditional sympathy flowers, and for an Anglican or Catholic service around here they are all correct. One thing worth knowing: the rule people repeat about chrysanthemums being a funeral taboo is an Italian-Catholic thing. It does not apply to the families around Green Point, and a good chrysanthemum will outlast everything else in the arrangement. More families now ask for a celebration of life in natives instead of white, banksias and waratahs in season, something that looks like the person actually lived on this coast. Built right, the woody banksia and grevillea go on the outside as a frame and the soft stems sit protected in the middle, so it travels to the chapel without bruising.

Someone you know has moved into Broadlands, or into one of the aged care homes around Kincumber and Point Clare, and you keep meaning to visit. The flowers go while you sort out when.

These go to reception, not the room, and the staff carry them through and pin the card where the resident will see it from the bed. Order before 2pm and they arrive the same afternoon; if nobody is at the desk, the florist leaves a note and the home calls. If the person has dementia and you are wondering whether they will even register the flowers, send them anyway. They often mean more to you than to them, and that is reason enough. Keep the card short and the print large; first name and "thinking of you" is plenty.

On the phones, the dementia question came up a lot, and the answer is always familiarity. Send the ones the person would recognise from their own kitchen table fifty years ago. Roses, daisies, carnations, a bit of lavender if they kept a garden. Not the exotic stems. A familiar flower lands; an unfamiliar one just sits there. And keep it low and compact, because a tall arrangement takes up half a bedside table and becomes the staff's problem before the day is out.

I have done the hospital flower run myself, years back, our baby screaming in the back of the car, five minutes to get a bunch to reception and nowhere to park. When someone has been admitted and you cannot get there, the flowers are the next best thing to sitting by the bed.

Most go to the ward through main reception, where staff log them and bring them round. Put the patient's full name, the ward, and the room number on the order; if you only have a name, hospital flowers still reach them through the nursing station. If you are stuck on the card, short is kindest: "Thinking of you, no need to reply."

Skip the lilies for anyone on the cancer ward. The ward sets that rule, for patients whose immune systems are down, and the Cancer Centre is on the same campus. Send get well flowers built from gerberas or lisianthus instead, in a box that stands on the bedside table without needing a vase nobody can find. Gerberas are clean and pollen-free, which is exactly what the ward wants; the lisianthus is the one that carries the look through to the end of the week. Bright if the news is good, softer if you are not sure.

None of those three is quite your situation. That is most orders, honestly.

Sometimes the trouble is the opposite, and you cannot tell whether this is sympathy, get well, or just thinking of you. If you cannot place it, a gentle mixed arrangement in muted tones suits all three, and you do not have to label the occasion to get it right.

If it is a milestone, an eightieth or a ninetieth, which this suburb has a lot of, Anna has a view on what travels best. For an older recipient I would take lisianthus over hydrangea every time. Hydrangea looks lush in the shop and wilts in a warm room within two days; lisianthus gives you the same ruffled fullness and lasts three times as long. For a milestone like an eightieth, a box of lisianthus and roses in a soft colour does more than a big showy bunch that is tired by the weekend.