Arrange Same Day Flowers to Shortland NSW, Saturdays Too

You know the date and the address, and you won't be the one handing the flowers over. A house needs a mobile in the notes; a Shortland Waters villa needs its number and its village street, such as Ibis Crescent or Spoonbill Place. Without the street, a villa number is a guess. Pick from birthday flowers or birthday flowers for Mum.

The 3 Gerberas In A Vase arrives ready to stand. Gerbera stems are hollow and fold at the neck when they run dry, so that vase wants topping up every day.

They're in Hunter Valley Private Hospital on Mawson Street with a new knee or hip, and you can't get there this week. Still admitted: full name, ward and room in the notes. Going home in a day or two: send the flowers to the house and choose a delivery day after they're home. Hospital flowers and get well flowers can both go same day. On the card: "Hope the new knee behaves" or "Go easy on that new hip."

I learnt about vases the hard way. Winter 2007, John Flynn at Tugun, wrapped roses for a man two days out of a knee replacement, and no vase on the ward. The roses got his water jug. He got a plastic cup. Hunter Valley Private is the same kind of hospital, and in our experience wards don't keep spare vases, so send something that arrives in its own box or vase.

Anna, on what lasts the stay

The Australian Native Arrangement, in its own presentation box. Protea and leucadendron hold two weeks and more, and the protea then dries in place without collapsing.

The funeral notice gives a time and a place: Our Lady of Victories on Sandgate Road, say, or the chapel at White Lady Funerals in Mayfield. Choose from our funeral flowers and put the venue, family name and start time in the notes, or send sympathy flowers to the family's home once the visitors thin out. "Thinking of you all" is enough on the card. Ordering a wreath on a phone feels like the wrong way to buy one. Plenty of the wreaths at the front of a church got there exactly that way.

Anna's pick for the house: the Gorgeous White Arrangement, which comes in its own box so nobody has to find a vase. White shows every mark first, so it stays clean longest out of the afternoon sun.

Plenty of orders come with no occasion attached and nothing to go on about the person's taste: a new job, a first share house near the uni, a long week. For those, Anna points at the Australian Natives Bunch, the one we sell more of than anything else.

It arrives wrapped, so tell them to split the woody protea stems a few centimetres at the base before they go in a vase, because a clean cut alone won't let a protea drink. Once the waxflower is done, the protea and brunia dry on a shelf for months. More in our native flowers.