Order Same Day Birthday or Get Well Flowers to North Lambton

It's their birthday, maybe a 30th, and you can't be the one handing them over. Plenty of houses here are empty between school drop-off and pick-up, so send birthday flowers where they'll be: home if someone's in, work if not (add the business name and level). Put their mobile in the notes either way; in our experience the florist rings it before leaving anything on a sunny step.

A wrapped bunch is happy in its wet pack for a few hours. Then it wants a vase, a fresh cut at about forty-five degrees, and every leaf below the waterline stripped off, because leaves left in the water rot and the rot blocks the stems.

You've had a text with a ward number in it, or heard they're home and sore. If they're home, send get well flowers to the house with their mobile in the notes. For Calvary Mater in Waratah or John Hunter on Lookout Road, put their full name and ward; in our experience the ward desk takes the flowers through. If it's a cancer or blood ward, check with the family first, as some can't take flowers. A card can just say "Thinking of you. Here whenever you need me."

On a ward, hospital flowers that bring their own vase save the nurses a hunt.

Anna's call: 3 Gerberas In A Vase. Next to no scent and no pollen to drop, which counts with another bed a metre away, and the glass comes with them.

You have the notice, and the service is somewhere you've never been. Send funeral flowers with the funeral director's name, the venue and the start time. The service might be at Dailey Family Funerals on Elder Street, Jesmond Park Uniting Church on Robert Street, or a graveside at Sandgate Cemetery.

I learned why in 2008, driving a white wreath out to the Tweed Valley Lawn Cemetery at Eviron with nothing on the order but the cemetery's name (Asha was one, and with Andrew at the shop, thank goodness). There were two services on that morning. I stood at the wrong one long enough to hear a name I didn't know, then walked the wreath across the lawn, trying very hard not to run, and made the right one with minutes to spare. Sandgate Cemetery is a lot bigger than Eviron.

Flowers won't change what's happened, and the family will still read every card. "With love, thinking of you all" is enough. Sympathy flowers for home can follow when the visitors thin out.

Anna, on what stands up at a graveside

A tall vase tips over on grass. A wreath lies flat, and the Wreath With White & Purple Tones drinks from its own soaked foam ring, so it holds up through a long morning in the open.

Not every order is a birthday, a hospital stay or a funeral. With the University of Newcastle's Callaghan campus next door, send graduation flowers the day before, to wherever the graduate is staying; in our experience the Great Hall ceremony is the one place a delivery can't reach them. And then there's the neighbour who had the kids for an afternoon when everything went sideways, which is exactly what thank-you flowers are for. Anna has a view on all of these.

Go the Bright Bunch & White Wine. Strong colour holds its own in a graduation photo, and the bunch is spiral-tied, meaning the stems cross at one tie point and splay at the base, so it stands up by itself the moment it goes in a vase.