Flower Delivery Kingscliff: Lily's Florist

Where it all Began in Kingscliff

Set aside what you’re doing and send some love through flowers to your loved ones and friends in Kingscliff. Actually, Kingscliff is where our journey began in flower delivery after buying Kingscliff Florist at 1/98 Marine Parade, Kingscliff NSW 2487 in 2006. To find out more about our journey in flowers in vastly more detail visit our About Us page. But I thought I would share some, like a brief snippet!

My name is Siobhan, I own Lily's Florist and Kingscliff is where our story began, and by our, I mean Andrew too my partner and the other co-founder of Lily's Florist. There's something beautifully ironic about delivering flowers to Kingscliff. It may seem a little odd or unusual sharing this story, but it's a foundation story that altered our lives, and our kids lives forever, a sliding door moment one might say but ultimately vital in understanding who we are and how we evolved to Lily's Florist.

Early Days in the Shop

In 2006, and like so many since then, looking for a seachange, Kingscliff was on a very short list of towns we wanted to visit, then living in Sydney. One early April day that year we flew to Ballina, hired a Hyundai Getz, in yellow mind you, and lazily made our way up the M1, by lazy, I simply mean that the car was flat out, down hill at 100KMH. My grandfather used to call these types of cars 'rolls-kin-ardleys', that is, rolls down hills but can hardly get up them. But I digress, we exited the M1 from the Cabarita Beach exit, not that we had ever heard of the place before, and pushed north again. Back then, the road across Cudgen Creek was 1 lane, and a wooden bridge. If you know, you know, it was 1PM, the sun at its zenith, it was high tide, I had to double take as I looked left down the creek, was I in Fiji or Northern NSW? I was completely blown away. In that one moment, without exaggeration, Kingscliff moved to #1 on our list.

After a quick feed at Zanzibar on Marine Parade, and enjoying a leisurely stroll back down the street we passed a flower and gift shop, and it was for sale. You see, part of the seachange plan was to either buy an existing business or start a new one, our thought was gifts and organic skincare, food, and baby products, the latter made sense, as I was a few months pregnant at the time - who ended up being a girl, Asha, who is now almost 19!

A Flower Seachange

We stayed at Mantra at Salt that night and, during dinner, discussed the possibility of buying that shop/business, scaling down the flowers, and building up the gifts and adding our flare. Some months later, we ended up moving to Kingscliff, and despite advice against buying Kingscliff Florist by a local accountant, who in no uncertain terms said "don't do it...", we did it and bought the business. By then about 5 months pregnant, a new home, and new business, I thought, game on!

We opened the doors, with limited flowers and gifts in November 2006, to much excitement and fanfare. By April 2007 the reality of owning a small business, in a small coastal town had set in "where is everyone...?"! One thing that stayed true through, and honestly, painfully and times and that was that phone kept ringing for people wanting to send flowers to Kingscliff, but also other areas like Pottsville, Cudgen, Casuarina (tiny as it was then), but also random places like Taree, Bendigo, Townsville and the like, and lots of them. Perplexed by so many calls, thanks to, what we learned later, was a Yellow Pages ad, some time in 2007, after saying sorry we cannot help to literally 1000's of call outside our area, we thought to ourselves, with $20 in the till, at the max, from a days trade, enter sliding doors moment, what if we took the call, rang a florist in the town where the flowers were going to, told the florist who we were, and asked them to make the flowers us. It was not until some time later that we discovered that, back then, flowers were often sent this way. Call your local flower shop, and get them to organise the delivery for you, which coined the phrase 'wire flowers'.

Pivot to Flowers Online

The pivot from trying to be an organic gift shop with a few flowers to fully embracing the flower business wasn't easy. We sold our organic products business and the shop, moved online completely with flowers, and converted our garage in Pottsville, where we moved to briefly, into a proper office. We hired real but ex-florists like Will and Anna to give us credibility and expertise. By 2013, we'd grown from that single shop to coordinating with 160 partner florists, and not long after that back ti Kingscliff. Today, that number exceeds 800 and the business is very different, but Kingscliff remains special because it taught us everything, we still live here, we still swim in Cudgen Creek (AKA Kingy Creek), we still eat and Zanzibar, and well, it feels like we have lived here forever now.

Popular Flowers for Kingscliff Occasions

Over the years, we've learned what Kingscliff loves, often through memorable moments in our old shop. Beach wedding bouquets need hardy tropicals like heliconias and birds of paradise that won't droop in the humidity and photograph magnificently against the ocean. I'll never forget the panic when a bride called crying because her original florist had cancelled the morning of her Salt Beach wedding. We scrambled together the most gorgeous tropical arrangement, drove it there ourselves with our baby in the car seat, and made it just before she walked down the aisle. 

Birthday Flowers

Birthday surprises for the Salt Village residents often call for bright, cheerful gerberas and sunflowers that match the sunny disposition of coastal living. There was this elderly gentleman who came into our shop every month to buy flowers for his wife's grave at Tweed Valley Cemetery. One day, I recall so intimately, he mentioned it was his 80th birthday the next week and he had no family nearby. We surprised him with a bright sunflower arrangement at his apartment on Pearl Street. He came back the next day, tears in his eyes, said it was the first birthday flowers he'd received since his wife passed. One of many 100's of stores I could tell you about.

Get Well Arrangements

Get well arrangements heading to Tweed Valley Hospital need to be uplifting but not overwhelming, something to brighten those sterile rooms. During those early days, we'd often deliver there ourselves. Once, we got completely lost in the hospital trying to find the maternity ward, walking around with a massive pink arrangement, our own baby strapped to my chest, asking everyone for directions. The nurses thought we were patients who'd gotten confused and tried to escort us back to our room!

Thank You Bouquets

Thank you bouquets for local businesses along Marine Parade tend toward elegant natives that last well in air conditioning. The cafe owner, 4 doors down from our shop used to bring us coffee every morning when we were renovating, refusing payment. When they won a local business award, we created this stunning arrangement of banksias and waratahs. They displayed it proudly for weeks, long after the flowers had dried, because they said it reminded them of community support. And for those "just because" moments, mixed seasonal bouquets that capture the casual beauty of coastal living always hit the mark, like the time a local surfer ordered flowers for every shop on the street just because he'd had a good day on the waves.

Tweed Valley Hospital Flowers Delivery

Have an urgent need to send flowers at Kingscliff? No worries, Lily’s Florist sends same day flowers, just place your orders by 2 PM cut-off time on weekends and before 10 AM on Saturdays and we’ll go ahead and take care of delivering happiness through flowers to your family and friends. That includes Tweed Valley Hospital (from May 14 2024). The new Tweed Valley Hospital is located at 771 Cudgen Rd, Cudgen NSW 2487, when you are in our checkout, please ensure you include this address, a ward and bed number if possible.

The Family Behind Your Flowers

We're still that same couple who took a chance on a rundown flower shop all those years ago. Still making business decisions at the dinner table, getting takeaway from Breadwinner, still living locally, still very much a Mum and Dad operation. Our daughters have grown up in this business; one's about to graduate year 12, the same little one who crawled around our shop floor in Kingscliff and later broke that gift in Murwillumbah. The other, Ivy, was born during our craziest period, right in the middle of Valentine's week 2011, all 10.2 pounds of her.

When you order from us, you're not dealing with a corporation with boardrooms and marketing teams. You're supporting our family and the families of our partner florists. Every order matters to us personally because we remember what it was like starting out, counting the cents in our till on those quiet winter days, wondering if we'd made a terrible mistake.

Your Kingscliff Flowers, Delivered with History

Every we pass our old shop (it's called Kingscliff Surf now), we think about that first walk down Marine Parade, that moment of seeing the "For Sale" sign that changed everything. From one overwhelming shop with a phone that wouldn't stop ringing to coordinating a network that can deliver anywhere in Australia, the journey has been remarkable. But Kingscliff isn't just where we started, it's where we learned what matters most and that is, genuine care, local knowledge, and the understanding that flowers aren't only products, they're connections between people.

When you send birthday wishes to Salt, anniversary roses to Casuarina, or a thinking of you bouquet anywhere in the Kingscliff area, you're not just getting flowers. You're getting decades of local knowledge, partnerships built on trust, and the dedication of people who still remember what it felt like to answer that first phone call in a tiny shop on Marine Parade. This is where we learned that every bouquet tells a story, and we're honored to help tell yours.