Robina Flower Delivery, Same Day to the Ward or Home

It's their birthday and you're not there, which is half the reason you're ordering. Most of the birthday flowers we send into Robina go to a house, and plenty go to a mum or dad at Estia Health Robina or Villa Serena, where in our experience reception signs and staff take them along. For a house, give us a mobile number someone will pick up. For a 70th, 80th or 90th in aged care, the room number.

A boxed arrangement wins in a small room. Nothing to tip, no vase to hunt for, and the wet foam inside keeps it drinking as long as someone tops it up from the side.

You've got a ward name off a text message and not much else. That's usually enough: the patient's full name and ward go in the notes, and if they're heading home today, send the get-well flowers to the house. I first carried flowers into Robina Hospital in 2007, Asha in her capsule on one arm and a get-well bunch on the other, while the new emergency department was going up. We went the long way round a lot of fencing (she was not impressed). For the card, something light usually lands better than something worried: "Get well soon. The TV remote is all yours for now."

Anna's pick: 3 Gerberas In A Vase. Almost no scent, narrow enough for the table, and a gerbera's colour reads from across a ward. If yellow's their colour, have a look at our yellow flowers, and keep to the smaller ones for a bedside.

You're holding a funeral notice and working out where the flowers should go. A wreath or sheath goes to the funeral director for the service, so the notes want their name, the venue and when the service starts: Simplicity Funerals on Christine Avenue, say, as the director, and the chapel at Allambe as the venue. A smaller bunch sent home to the family a week later often means more, once everyone else has gone quiet. Our funeral flowers include both, and for the card, plain is kind: "Holding you all close today."

Anna, on colour

Whites, creams and soft greens sit quietly beside a photo. If the family keeps a particular faith, check the colour first; white isn't right in every tradition. Timing matters as much as colour. Too early and a sheath waits in a back room; too late and it misses the service. The florists I worked with always rang the funeral director for the drop-off window, which is why that name in the notes matters so much.

Plenty of orders sit outside those three: a graduation at Bond University, a thank-you for a teacher at Robina State High, a congratulations that's been coming for months.

That's when I hand it to Anna.

Go with the Rose, Gerbera & Lilies Bunch. Three flowers almost everyone likes, spiral-tied so the stems cross at one point and splay at the base, which means it stands up on its own in a jug. Handy in a student flat that has never owned a vase.