Paradise Point Flower Delivery Today, Canal Home or Church

Mum turns 80 at her place on the canal, and you won't be at the table. Send 80th birthday flowers to the house on the morning of the birthday, and if she might be out at the Paradise Point Bowls Club on Thrush Avenue, put a phone number and a shady spot for them in the notes. A 70th works the same way.

Whatever you send, keep it low. Flowers about half as tall again as their container sit steady on a side table all week; anything taller gets knocked by someone reaching for the remote.

Fifty years married, and the address is on the Sovereign Islands. In 2008 I drove a golden-anniversary arrangement up from our Kingscliff shop on a docket I'd written myself: a surname, a house number, "Sovereign Islands". The man at the security gate asked which island. There are six. He knew the couple, rang the house, and the husband walked down in his slippers to collect the arrangement.

For anniversary flowers, give us both names, the street and a phone number that answers.

Anna's pick: the Blush Pinks Arrangement With Chocolates. It's built into foam inside its striped container, so the same small cup of water every two days keeps those soft pink flowers going well past the anniversary itself.

The funeral notice says Paradise Point Uniting Church on Paradise Parade (or Holy Family, over in Runaway Bay), and you can't be there. Send funeral flowers to the church with their name and the service time in the notes, then sympathy flowers for the home a week or so later, once the relatives have flown out. For the card, "So sorry we can't be there. All our love" is enough.

Anna, on timing a sheath

A sheath needs no vase and lies flat on the coffin, which is why it suits a church service. The florists I worked with aimed to have it there an hour before people arrive, never the night before in a warm church.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: flowers for a neighbour who's been unwell, or for a friend who's just moved into a townhouse off the Esplanade.

The Native Arrangement With Chocolates. Australian natives are tough stems that hold up in a bright room and suit a 35-year-old or an 85-year-old equally. The whole thing is built into foam in its own cube, so the cup-of-water habit above is all the care it needs.