Flower Delivery Mascot, Same Day to Desk, Unit or Hotel

It is a friend's birthday today, the address has a building name and a unit number, and you have no idea which buzzer is theirs. Put the name exactly as it shows on the intercom panel in the notes, plus a mobile. In our experience, if nobody answers, the florist rings you before the flowers are left sitting in a lobby.

The card is the part people keep. In 2007, in our shop on Marine Parade in Kingscliff, I wrote them myself until Siobhan read one over my shoulder, took the pen off me and wrote it again on a fresh card. From then on I drove and she wrote. Going by the review above, the florist writing Mascot's cards has neater handwriting than mine, which is good news if you are sending one of our best-selling birthday flowers.

Anna's call: a properly made hand-tied bunch has its stems spiralled to one binding point, so it stands up on its own when you set it down. Handy when the only vase in the unit is at the back of a cupboard nobody has opened in years.

Someone at work pulled something off, and the flowers need to be on their desk before they head home. In the Qantas buildings or anywhere along Bourke Road, the whole floor sees them arrive, which is half the point. From what our florists have seen, reception signs and calls the person down, so the mobile in the notes saves a second trip. Our thank-you flowers and celebration flowers both travel well to a desk.

Keep it a room away from the fruit bowl in the office kitchen. Ripening fruit gives off ethylene, and flowers read it as the signal to finish: carnations curl at the edges, waxflower drops every floret at once. Chrysanthemum couldn't care less.

Your person is flying in late, or flying out first thing, and tonight they are in a hotel room on O'Riordan Street. Send it for their check-in day and put the name exactly as it is on the booking. In our experience the front desk holds flowers until the guest arrives, which suits anniversary flowers timed to a late landing.

When I was a kid in Sydney, Mascot meant one thing: the airport. The nearest thing to it in our delivery years was John Flynn Hospital at Tugun, right beside the Gold Coast Airport. Around 2008 I learned to stop talking at the front desk whenever a jet came over, because nobody could hear the patient's name anyway. Same planes, give or take.

Anna, on rooms with no vase

A hotel room has an ice bucket, a kettle and nothing a stem can drink from. An arrangement in its own container with wet foam goes straight onto the desk. Deep reds for love and romance flowers hold their colour longest, as long as they sit out of the afternoon sun through the glass. Sunlight is what pinks a red out.

A welcome home, a first flat, a sorry-I-missed-it, nothing in particular. Plenty of Mascot orders fit none of the cards above, and our mixed flowers cover more of that ground than anything else. Anna has a view on this.

Go mixed and sturdy: a few roses, some alstroemeria, eucalyptus for the green and the scent. Alstroemeria is the quiet workhorse. In my experience it keeps opening new buds well into the second week and sits happily in a dry room, and the whole bunch still looks like somebody chose it.