Same Day Flowers to Mermaid Beach, Ward to Surf Club

Their birthday falls on a Saturday and they'll be down on the sand in the red and yellow, not sitting at home waiting for the doorbell. That's fine: send it to the club, order it before 10am that Saturday (or the day before, to be safe), and put their mobile in the notes. In 2007 Andrew walked a birthday bunch along to the surf club on Hedges Avenue for a woman on patrol, and the whole tower clapped (I heard about that one for weeks). The Florists Choice Birthday Bunch is a lovely one for a day like that (I'd leave the chocolates for a day indoors), or have a look through our best-selling birthday flowers.

Whoever unwraps the bunch should give every stem a fresh cut on an angle and get the stems straight into water. A flat cut sits against the bottom of the vase and the stem can't drink.

The text says both are doing well, there's a photo you've looked at twenty times, and you're two states away. If they're at Pindara Private in Benowa or Gold Coast University Hospital in Southport, name the hospital, the maternity ward and mum's full name, and from what we've seen, the flowers stop at the ward desk first and go up to her from there. There are more ideas in our new baby flowers.

Anna's pick: an arrangement in its own box, because new parents aren't changing vase water and the box is the vase. Nothing that sheds, nothing heavily scented. The Florists Choice Baby Girl Arrangement or the Florists Choice Baby Boy Arrangement are both a good place to start.

You can't be at the service, and you want something of yours to be. If it's at Stella Maris on Hedges Avenue or White Lady Funerals in Miami, put the name of the person who has died and the service time in the notes, and choose from our funeral flowers. Flowers for the family's home can come later (our sympathy flowers for the home are made for that), once the visitors thin out and the house goes quiet. Flowers fix none of it, and families still remember whose card was there.

Anna, on what goes into the church

Whites, creams and soft greens are what I'd put together for a church, because bright colour reads loud from the pews. The florists I worked with rang the funeral director for the delivery window: too early and the flowers sit in a back room, too late and they miss the service. The Gorgeous White Arrangement is that palette.

Card idea: "Holding you all close today, and every day after."

Some orders have no occasion attached: a thank-you to the neighbour who fed the cat, a cheer-up for a friend whose week went sideways. If you're stuck, natives have been our best seller since about 2013, which tells you something, and Anna would start there too. Order the Natives Flowers With A Vase and the vase turns up too, so nobody in a holiday unit has to go hunting for one.

Natives are mostly woody stems, banksia and protea especially, and they cope with a dry room better than most. Whoever puts them in water should crack open the bottom few centimetres of the woodiest stems so they can drink. A clean cut alone won't do it.