Flower Delivery to Little Hartley, Same Day Before 2pm

You found out by phone, from a long way off, and the first practical thing anybody needs from you is a decision about where flowers go. There are two answers here and they are not interchangeable.

Service flowers go to the funeral director in Lithgow. Address them with the name of the person who died and the date of the service, because no funeral home operates in the valley and tribute work is made up in town, then travels in with the director. Condolence flowers to the family home are the other answer. Three days is the window most families here expect, and if you cannot decide between the two, the home is safer, because it keeps working after the service is over.

You will not be in the room to see where yours ends up, and the flowers are the short part of it regardless. The card is what gets kept. Usually in a drawer, sometimes for years, so write that one like it is the thing that lasts. "Thinking of you and your family" has never once been the wrong four words.

Anna on colour, and the one thing to ask first

White is safe at every kind of service held around here and it always has been. Red is the one to check on, because at a Western Christian service it is fine and almost anywhere else it reads as celebration. In this valley no religion was the biggest single answer on the last census, ahead of Catholic and Anglican both, so you cannot assume the form of the service from the postcode. For a Catholic funeral expect generous white lilies going to the church. Keep those same lilies away from a hospital bed, where the pollen travels between beds and gets on clothes. And if the family have been on this Country a long time, banksia and wattle carry a weight here that an imported rose never will.

She has been quiet on the phone and the drive is three hours each way. That is the most common order we take into this valley and it does not need a reason attached to it. Thinking of you flowers need no occasion and no warning call first. Somebody is usually about on a property in the middle of the day, and where they are not, the driver rings from the road before anything gets left. On the card, "no reason, just thinking of you" does the whole job.

Anna has two picks for a house with the heater going.

Carnation and alstroemeria are the two nobody asks for and the two that go the distance. Eighteen to twenty-four days for a carnation out of a cool room, and neither of them sulks in dry air the way a hydrangea will. Come winter, tulips or ranunculus. They are at their cheapest and their best from about May, and this climate is the one they were bred for. A mixed bunch under sixty dollars covers it.

The table has been booked for weeks and you are not going to be at it. The median age in this valley is 49 against a state median of 39, which is why the milestone orders run to 60ths and 70ths well ahead of children's parties, and sent home to Mum is the commonest version of all. Same day works and it works most days. If the date is fixed, give us the day before and take the search out of it entirely.

Anna on making it last past the party

Roses are the default for a milestone and they are the wrong shape for this one. Ten to fourteen days is an honest run for a hybrid tea down here, which covers the party fine. The party is not the problem. A 60th in a settled valley brings people calling in for a fortnight afterwards, and a disbud chrysanthemum goes eighteen to thirty days, so it is still standing when the last of them drives home.

Nobody tells you which, and the answer changes what you order and when. Ring the ward or the family and ask before you spend anything, because a bunch that arrives the afternoon somebody was discharged is a bunch that goes home in a car boot.

If it is the hospital, hospital flowers go to main reception and a ward clerk carries them through, which from what our florists have seen can take anywhere from half an hour to most of an afternoon. Intensive care takes none at any hospital ours have dealt with. If it is home, you have more room to move and the vase life down here is on your side.

Anna, on ward rules and the aged care homes

No lilies to a ward. The pollen carries onto clothes and the person in the next bed did not choose it. Pollen-free Asiatic if somebody wants the look. Send a box or a vase build rather than a wrapped bunch, because wards keep no spare vases and a nurse should not be hunting for one. Same at Cooinda or Tanderra: reception takes it, and for a shared room keep it small, low scent and stable. Roses, daisies and lavender land better with an older resident than anything a magazine would put on a cover.

None of the four above quite fitted, and you would rather not spend an evening deciding. Nothing about that needs solving before you order.

Natives first, and the reason is the cool chain. The last leg of any delivery is the one part with no cool room in it. A van, a gate, then however long it takes somebody to walk out from the house. Banksia and leucadendron do not care about any of that. A soft-headed bunch spends the whole of it working.

Sorted for you, then. To a house, a mixed bunch under sixty dollars will still be good the following weekend down here. To a service, white. To a 60th, natives or a chrysanthemum-led build. To a ward or an aged care room, a box or vase arrangement. And if you would rather somebody else chose, florist's choice here means the strongest bucket on the bench that day, which beats anything a locked recipe can promise two days ahead.

Let a florist near the valley choose, before 2pm