Flowers to Hastings Point, Where Half the Houses Sit Empty

Someone in the village has lost a partner, or a neighbour of forty years has gone. In a town where nearly half the households are a single person, a loss like that lands hard and lands quiet. Flowers will not close the distance to a funeral you cannot reach. They speak in the room when you cannot be there.

There is no funeral home or cemetery in Hastings Point, so a sympathy order goes one of two ways: to the family home, whether that is a house on the coast road or a unit at the village, or to whichever funeral director the family has engaged, most likely Heritage Brothers over at Tweed Heads or Chinderah. Tell us which when you order and we route it right. From what our florists find, within three days of the news is the window that matters.

Anna on what to send, and what to write

For a home I keep it soft and low when I do not know the family, whites and greens, natives if they lean that way. Skip the heavy Oriental lilies if you are unsure of the household, the scent fills a small room and the pollen stains everything it touches. This coast runs secular, though. More people here tick no religion than any single church, so I would not reach for scripture on the card, and a lot of the services here are a celebration of someone's life. When that is the case, ask what they grew, what they loved, what was in their garden, and send those colours. Bright belongs at a send-off like that. On the phones I steered plenty of people to something plain and true: "Thinking of you, with love," or just the family name and yours. It is enough. It is meant to be. The flowers are gone in a week. The card is what they keep, in a drawer, years later, and I heard that from enough families on the phones to know it is true.

You cannot get up the coast this weekend, and the person you are thinking of is on their own more than they let on. A parent who says they are fine on the phone. A friend who went quiet.

This is the order we send more than any other to Hastings Point, and it is almost always someone a long way south checking that a person up here is alright. A thinking of you bunch does not stand in for the visit you keep meaning to make. It just means the day you thought of her did not pass without her knowing. The catch is the address. If it is a holiday unit, or a house that sits empty midweek, tell us, and the florist will confirm someone is there before it goes, or ring you if it is not.

The question came up on the phones hundreds of times, some version of "she is ninety and she is on her own, what do I send." My answer never changed. Go bright. She sees the colour from the doorway before she has picked out a single flower, and older eyes lose the soft end of the spectrum first, so the pastel bunch that looks tasteful in the photo can read as grey on a kitchen table. Hot pinks, golds, a bit of orange. And keep it low enough that she does not have to lift a heavy vase to shift it off the bench. What she can lift counts for more than what is in the bunch.

It is a big one, a seventieth or an eightieth, and you want it to look like an occasion in its own right. The largest single group in this whole town is people in their late seventies, so these land here most weeks. When the party is a long drive south of you, the flowers arrive before the family and outlast the last guest. You are really sending your presence, and it sits on the sideboard for a fortnight after.

If it is going to the TriCare village on Tweed Coast Road, it goes to reception first, and the staff log it and carry it through to the resident, usually within a few hours. We learned how these drops work the hard way in the early days, a baby screaming in the car and no park to be found in the heat, and the staff were always the ones who got the flowers the last few metres to the door. Put the resident's full name and their building or unit number in the notes and it will not go astray.

The choice that actually matters is the shape of the thing. For a room, I would take a low box over a tall bouquet every time. A big hand-tied bunch photographs beautifully and then swamps a small bedside table, and someone has to hunt down a vase for it. A boxed arrangement arrives in its own water and sits flat, and the scent does the work up close. Save the show-stopper for a birthday in a house with a mantelpiece. For a room, compact and fragrant wins.

Plenty of orders here do not fit a neat occasion. A thank-you to a neighbour who has been checking in. A welcome for someone arriving at a holiday rental. A just-because for a parent who lives alone.

When someone cannot decide, I point them at the natives every time. A mixed native bunch, waxflower, a protea or two, some kangaroo paw, is the most forgiving thing you can send to this coast. Natives were built for salt air and stagnant heat, and you can see it for yourself here: the hardenbergia and coastal wattle that run wild over the headland shrug off conditions that would flatten a rose by lunchtime. A native bunch does the same in a closed room, and it will still be standing a week after a soft-petal bunch has given up. If the budget is tight, our flowers under $60 do the same job with fewer stems. Either way you are sending something that lasts, which up here is the whole point.