Send Same Day Flowers to New Lambton From Anywhere

You've had a text with a ward number in it and not much else. If they're still in, send hospital flowers and put the hospital (John Hunter or Newcastle Private), their full name and the ward in the notes; in our experience the front desk sends them up. Home already? Send get well flowers to the house. I know the reception scramble from the other side. When Asha was still a baby I pulled up at Murwillumbah Hospital with her screaming in the back, thirty-seven degrees, five minutes to get the flowers in and no park anywhere (oh, the anxiety). At Murwillumbah the flowers only had to reach one front counter. John Hunter is far bigger, so the ward in the notes is what gets them to the right bed. On the card: "Rest up. We'll save you the good chair."

Anna's pick for a shared room: gerberas, roses or natives. All three carry next to no scent, and in a shared room the person in the next bed didn't choose the perfume. Save the heavily scented stems, oriental lilies and stock, for when they're home, where that perfume is half the present.

You won't be at the table this year, so the flowers go in your place. Birthdays here go to a busy family house, a desk, or a room at St John's Villa on Kings Road. In the notes, put their mobile for the house (so the florist can ring if nobody's home), the business name for work, or the room number for St John's. The range above has a Birthdays tab (or see all our birthday flowers), and if you can't decide, the best-sellers are a safe place to start. If it's an 80th, put the number on the card (they'll want every visitor to know).

For a room at St John's Villa, choose an arrangement that brings its own water. For the house, the Colourful Bunch Including Chocolates comes wrapped, so it wants a vase first. Strip every leaf below the waterline. Every single one. Leaves left underwater rot, and the rot blocks the stems from drinking. Then cut each stem at about forty-five degrees, because a flat cut sits on the bottom of the vase and seals itself off.

A funeral notice gives you a church, a time and not much else. For funeral flowers or a sheath for the coffin, put the venue and start time in the notes: St Therese's on Royal Street, say, Meighans on Lambton Road in Broadmeadow, or Dailey's on Elder Street in Lambton. Order the day before a morning service, so the flowers are with the funeral director before the doors open. Sympathy flowers for the house can follow a week later, when the house goes quiet and everyone else has gone home. Flowers don't fix anything, and people still remember who sent them. On the card: "Thinking of you all, with love."

Anna, on lily sheaths

A sheath is a long, flat spray made to lie along the coffin lid, so nothing tips when it's carried, and the White Lily & Rose Sheath is that shape. I pinched every anther out before a lily sheath left my bench, because dry pollen on a dark suit won't brush off. Sticky tape is what lifts it.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: a new baby home from John Hunter, a teacher at New Lambton Public School on Regent Street, the neighbour who put your mum's bins out for a month. Thank-you flowers were always my favourite calls, and so were the ones sent for no reason at all. Anna has one answer for every one of them.

The Florist's Choice Bunch. With no theme to match, the florist can build it from whatever came in strongest at the market that morning. When I had a free hand, that's what I reached for, because the freshest stems are the ones still drinking hard a week later.