Send Flowers to Pottsville, Where We Built Our First Home

Why the Morning Run Decides Whether Flowers Last Five Days or Two

Anna, qualified florist | took ten thousand-plus orders off the Pottsville phones, fifteen years on the bench

I live just up the road in Casuarina. I learned this trade a long way from the Tweed, back in North Carolina, then spent years on the bench at a boutique shop at Salt, in Kingscliff, on the same stretch of coast I would later take phone orders for. That gave me a few summers of watching what the heat does to a bucket of stems before I ever picked up a phone. From 2010 to the middle of 2013 I sat at a desk in the Pottsville home office, taking orders to every state in the country, somewhere around ten to twelve thousand calls. The same question came back down the line week after week: how long will they last in this heat? After the first summer I had the answer ready before the caller had finished asking.

The flowers that reach this coast start the day at a Brisbane grower and come down through Rocklea Markets on a truck that leaves before dawn, so by the time they reach a cool room here they have been moving for a good part of the morning. A florist in Toowong drives twenty minutes to collect; a stem bound for the Tweed Coast is already half a day older before it hits water. In January, when the inside of a van can climb past forty-five degrees by noon, that head start decides whether a bouquet lasts five days or drops its petals on day two. So the whole game on this coast is the early run: clear the coastal deliveries before the heat builds, and those extra days stay in the vase.

The senders who asked for natives had worked this out for themselves. Banksia, leucadendron, protea, waxflower: every one of them evolved for Australian heat and coastal salt, so they ride the truck down and still look right a fortnight later, long after an imported rose would have wilted in the same kitchen. That fortnight is the point. It is how long the person you sent them to keeps catching sight of them and thinking of you. This is mango and avocado country too, and the ethylene that ripening fruit gives off will flatten roses and tulips in a couple of days, so I always told callers to keep the vase clear of the fruit bowl. In a humid summer, watch the densest blooms, garden roses and carnations especially, once the air sits up near ninety per cent: grey fuzz on the petals is botrytis, and it takes hold faster than people expect.

What Happens After You Hit Order

No warehouse, no airport box. The moment you order, a florist at a bench in or near Pottsville builds it from stems they cut that morning, and by early afternoon it is on its way to the address. Either someone answers the door, or it waits in the shadiest spot they can find. A name and a pair of hands at every step, not a queue.

* The chalkboard from our office, mapping how an order travels from your screen to a florist's bench and out to a Pottsville door.

The Pottsville Chapter

We built our first home at Koala Beach in 2010, moving from Canthium Way in Casuarina after we sold the Kingscliff shop to go fully online. By then we were already sending flowers to hundreds of places around the country, so the plan was simple: turn the double garage into a proper office. Which we did, the whole hog, carpet, six desks, kitchenette, coffee machine, an outside toilet. It was cool.

Our first two employees were Will and Anna, both qualified florists. Will had made his name in the Sydney CBD and Eastern Suburbs before a sea change brought him north; Anna had come a lot further, from North Carolina, and she still works with us fifteen years on, these days keeping the books. Hiring florists was the smartest thing we did. It gave us credibility on the phone, and the two of them could talk shop with prospective partner florists in a way Andrew and I never could. The very first florist to ever take an order from us was The Flower Shed at Bray Park, one valley over in Murwillumbah, before there was a network at all. When Will and Anna started we had around twenty partners; within a couple of years that had grown many times over, and they were a big part of why.

It was not long before desks five and six were full. Valentine's week 2011 I was eight and a half months pregnant with Ivy (10.2 pounds, oh lord), we had a patchwork of borrowed desks and a few friends roped in to help, and the place was a battlefield. The phones never let up, and at one point I genuinely thought I was going to have Ivy right there in the garage. We got through it as a team. Our friend Jody looked at us with the sweat rolling off her and said, "OMG, what have you created?" She had no idea.

By 2013 the network had passed a hundred and fifty florists, and Lily's Florist had become a genuine national brand, covering the whole east coast and the Northern Territory. The first florist we ever worked with right here near Pottsville was Roots Floristry, run by Natarsha, who is still one of my closest friends, even if the business side of that connection is long behind us. By early 2013 the Pottsville chapter was nearly over, though we stayed at Koala Beach until December 2014. Asha went to Pottsville Beach Public from Kindy and did the intro year they called Future 5's, which was brilliant. In four years at Koala Beach, we saw exactly one koala.

Pottsville is years and a few hundred florists behind us now, but it is where this whole thing learned to work. When an order comes through for a door here, it still runs on the network we started at that garage table, one florist at a time, and I will own up to taking those ones a little personally.

* Clockwise from top left: Asha's first day at Pottsville Beach Public School. Ivy at Pottsville Beach Markets with flowers she bought herself. Asha riding her bike without training wheels, Koala Beach. The garage office where Lily's Florist became a national brand. Sunset over Mt Warning from the top of Koala Beach. Andrew surrounded by fax confirmations from partner florists (Asha took the photo). Every one of those fax sheets was an order we had taken over the phone and sent to a florist somewhere in Australia.

After You Order

Once your order is confirmed, it goes straight to a partner florist in or close to Pottsville. They condition and build it the morning it goes out, and most orders are on the bench within an hour.

You will get a confirmation by email the moment the order is placed. If you want to check on it during the day, or if something is not right when it arrives, call 1300 360 469 (7am to 6pm weekdays, 10am Saturdays) or email [email protected]. A real person answers, and we sort it out.

Andrew, the Other Half of Lily's Florist

I will be straight about the hard part of this stretch of coast: there is no flower shop left between Pottsville and Banora Point. The last one near here closed a while back. So every Pottsville order now runs from a partner florist up at Coolangatta, Tweed Heads or Banora Point, down the Tweed Coast Road. So I am fussy about the summer cut-off, because that drive plus a hot afternoon is where a delivery can come unstuck, and on the rare day one does, the call comes to me, not a script. I ring the florist, I find out what happened, and I ring the customer back. We have done it that way since the garage at Koala Beach. The only thing that has changed is the number of florists between then and now.

Your flowers travel from a florist close to the area to a Pottsville door, and in summer that run happens before noon. The recipient gets the flowers. Then, if you are lucky, you get the call. If it does not come straight away, give it a day. New parents are asleep, hospital patients are on medication, and silence is not rejection. The flowers had already done their work the moment they reached that door, whether the person has found the words to tell you yet or not.

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