Send Same Day Flowers to Sandgate NSW, Funeral or 80th

You've read the funeral notice twice: Sandgate Cemetery, a date, a time. You might be standing there yourself or you might not, but the flowers need to be there before the service starts. For a service in Sandgate Chapel, the funeral flowers go to the chapel. For a graveside service, in our experience they go to the funeral director first (White Lady Funerals on Maitland Road at Mayfield, say) and travel out with the casket. Either way, put the chapel or graveside and the start time in the notes.

In 2008 I was walking a wreath up to the chapel at Allambe Memorial Park in Nerang, Asha asleep in her car seat, just as the hearse pulled out for the graveside. One of the funeral director's staff took the wreath from me at the door and said it would go out to the graveside with the casket. I sat in the car afterwards and cried for a man I'd never met. Flowers fix none of it, and the family still reads every card. So send the wreath or sheath the day before a morning service, and keep the card plain: "Thinking of you all today" is enough.

Anna, on white at a service

White and soft green are the safest colours at nearly any funeral, and red is the riskiest: at a Chinese or Vietnamese service it reads as a celebration. For a Jewish or Hindu family, ask first, because flowers at the funeral usually aren't their custom.

Mum's in aged care at Calvary St Joseph's now, or Dad's in its retirement village, and the birthday is an 80th or a 90th. The home and the village share the one site at 240 Maitland Road, so say which in the notes, with the room or villa number. In our experience the aged care front desk takes flowers through to the room. If Mum's in the memory support unit, send the flowers anyway. They may mean more to you than to Mum or Dad, and that's fine.

Anna has a view on the bedside table.

A bedside table in a care room is small, and finding a vase isn't anyone's first job there. The Blush Pinks Arrangement With Chocolates is built low in its own foam box, about twenty centimetres high, so it fits. The lilies are Asiatics, which have next to no scent, and that matters with doors open all down a corridor. Those little green balls are chrysanthemums, and they'll still look fresh in close to two weeks.

Their time at Calvary St Joseph's has come to an end, and you want the staff on their wing to know it mattered. Send thank-you flowers addressed to that wing's staff, with the resident's name on the card: "Thank you for looking after Mum like she was your own."

A nurses' station is a working bench, so send something nobody has to tend. The Native Arrangement With Chocolates sits in a small cube of wet foam that holds its own water, so nobody on shift has to remember a vase, and the pincushion protea gives ten days or more. The chocolates won't last the shift.

Some orders don't fit a heading: a neighbour, a friend's rotten month, the anniversary of someone buried at Sandgate. White flowers sit on both sides of the line between sympathy and thinking of you, so you needn't decide which this is.

Anna's pick: the Gorgeous Whites Bunch. Change the water every second day, sooner if it clouds, and recut the stems each time: the white roses go seven to ten days. Keep it back from a sunny window, because white shows every mark.