Flower Delivery Harlaxton Today, Even With Nobody Home

The birthday is today, at a house in Harlaxton or with a boarder at Downlands College on Ruthven Street. For Downlands, add the student's full name and boarding house (Vandel, Piperon, Treand or Jouet); in our experience the front office takes it in.

I learned why the boarding house matters in 2008, at The Southport School on the Gold Coast, holding a birthday bunch from our Kingscliff shop and only a first name. The office paged the boy out of class. He collected it in front of half his year, said thanks to the floor and left at speed. Nobody had told me which boarding house he was in.

Anna's pick: something in its own vase for a boarder, since nobody in a boarding house owns one, and any of the bestselling birthday flowers for a house.

You've had a text saying they're in hospital and not much else. That's enough for get well flowers today. Put the hospital, the ward and their full name in the notes (St Andrew's Toowoomba Hospital on North Street, or Toowoomba Hospital on Pechey Street), and from what we've seen the front desk sends them up once the ward checks the name. A card that suits most stays: "Thinking of you. Home soon."

Anna, on a hospital bedside

Send it ready to stand. Wards keep no spare vases, and gerberas carry no scent to bother the next bed, so 3 Gerberas In A Vase is where I'd steer you, or anything in the hospital flowers range that comes in its own water.

You have a notice with a time and a church on it. For a service at Sacred Heart Church on North Street, put the time and the funeral director in the notes (Heritage & Heritage on James Street, say, or McGrath Funerals on Mylne Street). For the family home, the Florists Choice Sympathy Bunch from our sympathy flowers for home suits a kitchen table. A card can be short: "Thinking of you all, with love."

A wreath is over in an afternoon, and its card can sit in a drawer for twenty years.

For the church, pick a wreath or sheath. It lies flat on a coffin or a stand and can't tip, where a tall vase on a church step goes over the first time somebody brushes past. Whites and soft greens from the white sympathy flowers don't compete with anything in that room.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: a new job, a rough week, a mate who helped you move. You don't need a reason, and our just because flowers are there for exactly that.

Anna's call: the Beautiful Pastels Bunch. Soft pinks and lilac sit easily in almost any room. If you know they love colour, go the other way with the Florists Choice Bright Mixed Bunch.