Cart is empty
Shop ByHave Flowers in South Bowenfels Today, From $59.90 Delivered
Most addresses here take flowers at a front desk rather than a front door, so the name and room number on the order matter more than they do in most suburbs. Order by 2pm on a weekday and it is there that afternoon. Miss it and it goes the next working day, and there is no Sunday at all. A florist in or close to the suburb builds it on the day. Delivery is $16.95, villas on Col Drewe Drive out to the houses on Magpie Hollow Road. Ring 1300 360 469 before you order if it is going to a care home, a ward or a funeral director.
Where it is going 
Trained in North Carolina
Fifteen years on the bench 
survive the climb 
can actually accept 
and where each one goes 
the room to work
Five Addresses in This Suburb, Five Different Orders
Almost everything arriving in South Bowenfels goes through one of five kinds of front door, and the order changes at each. Pick the one that matches yours. For the occasions that call for restraint rather than colour, start with white flowers.
01
Sending to a room on Col Drewe Drive
You will not be there when it arrives and you may not hear about it for days. Three Tree Lodge takes flowers at reception rather than at the room. I rang and asked the first time we took an order there, and the answer has not changed since: staff walk it down. Roughly sixty beds at that one address, so a first name will not find her. Put her full name and the room or wing number in the notes. Treeview further along the drive is independent-living villas, which is a different problem, because she may be out.
$89.95 · $106.90 delivered
No lily Own water Fits a bedside table
Roses and carnations in a foam box about twenty centimetres tall, carrying its own water. No lily in it, so the person in the next bed never has to put up with the scent. The carnations will still be standing at day fourteen, which counts for a lot in a room where nobody has time to re-cut stems.
Just because flowersAnna
Qualified floristTrained in North Carolina
Fifteen years on the bench
I would not send a wrapped bunch into a place like that. Somebody at the desk has to go and find a vase with a trolley coming past, and it can sit in a sink until anyone has a spare twenty minutes. Send it in its own vessel. That rule is for facilities and wards, where nobody has a spare container or a spare minute. A family home is different and a wrapped bunch is fine there. And if it is a dementia wing, keep to stems she would recognise from her own kitchen table. Roses, carnations, daisies. Nothing that looks like it came off a magazine cover, and nothing anyone would be tempted to eat or drink out of.
02
Is anyone home to take it?
You have no way of knowing whether she is in the garden, up at the shops, or sitting three feet from the door. Most houses here are freestanding and a lot of the people in them are retired, so more often than not somebody answers. When nobody does, the driver needs a spot, and from May through August we ask for one out of the frost and out of the early sun. Birthdays arriving in this postcode skew a long way older than the national average, so start at the 80th or the 60th page.
$126.20 · $143.15 delivered
Three weeks in water Dries and keeps going Forgiving of a missed door
Pink proteas, yellow pincushions, waxflower and silver brunia berries. The most forgiving thing on this page if the door goes unanswered for an hour, and the only one still worth looking at a month later.
Birthday flowers for MumAnna
On why nativessurvive the climb
A protea does not care what the drive up here does to it. These are woody stems with low transpiration rates, so they arrive the way they left, and the pincushions and the brunia berries go the distance alongside them. Three weeks in water. Then the proteas dry where they stand and keep going for months. One thing to expect: the leaves below the head will darken before the flower does. The head is pulling sugar out of its own foliage, and it is not a fault. Strip the dark ones off and the protea carries on.
03
Find out the ward before you order
Find out which ward she is on before you order anything. In our experience intensive care, oncology, haematology, transplant and burns units do not take flowers at all, and an order placed while somebody is still in emergency waits at reception with nobody to claim it. If you do not know the ward, ring the hospital switchboard with her name and they will tell you. Once she is on a general ward at Lithgow Hospital, the flowers reach reception and a ward clerk carries them through. Put her full name and the ward on the order, and if it is a shared bay, say so. If the stay is short and she is home Thursday, send it to the house instead. It will outlast the admission.
Bright Mixed Gerbera Arrangement
$85.75 · $102.70 delivered
No lily Scentless Sits on an overbed table
Gerberas, all of them, in soaked foam in a box that sits on an overbed table without tipping. Virtually no scent and no anthers to worry about. Gerberas run to two weeks if the water stays clean, and it is the hollow stem that fails first, so bacteria is the thing to watch rather than the temperature.
Ward-safe arrangementsAnna
On what a wardcan actually accept
Most people send the biggest thing they can afford to a ward. In fifteen years I have never known a ward to keep a spare vase. Send a wrapped bunch and somebody has to unwrap it, cut it and hunt for a container, and that is nobody's job on a busy morning. Send it in a box. And no lilies. The scent is real in a shared bay, and the pollen is worse, because it lands on a sleeve and travels to a room that never asked for it. If you want the look without the risk, ask for pollen-free Asiatics.
04
A service in town, or the family's front room
There is no version of this where the flowers are the point, and you already know that. Funeral or family home is a real fork though, and it gets mixed up more than any order we take here. Service flowers go to the funeral director, and there are two of those close by, one on Mort Street and one on Chifley Road, so we need to know which. They want the date and the name of the person who died. From what our florists have seen, they want the flowers there the day before or first thing on the morning, rather than at the service. Flowers for the family at home go any time in the first few days. On the card, "thinking of you and your family" does the job and nobody has ever complained about it. Colour is the other thing worth settling: red is the riskiest funeral colour almost anywhere in Australia, and a Catholic or Anglican service here is one of the few places it is not.
Florists Choice Sympathy Bunch
$74.50 · $91.45 delivered
Built for a service Soothing palette
Built for this and nothing else. The florist works to a soothing palette rather than a fixed recipe, which on a sympathy order is the right way round, because they can read the season and the service. If it has to be white, ring us and say so on the order.
Funeral flowersAnna
On format,and where each one goes
White is the safest thing you can send to a funeral in this country and I have never once regretted it. Formats are not interchangeable, though. A wreath stands, usually near the entrance, for the family to see on the way in. A casket spray lies flat. A posy is for a front room. Send the wrong shape and it will be beautiful and in the wrong place.
05
The order with no obvious door
Some orders have no obvious door. A carer who has been good to your mother. A neighbour who has been checking the letterbox all winter. Somebody turning ninety who is well past caring what colour it is. If you have been scrolling because nothing quite fits, hand the decision to the florist and put the reason in the notes instead, because a thank you almost never lands wrong.
$81.75 · $98.70 delivered
Boxed Flower food included 500+ reviews
Boxed, with its own water and flower food, so nothing has to be found at the other end. More than five hundred people have gone back and reviewed something they ordered without knowing exactly what was coming, which says more about the florists who build it than a photograph could.
Florist's Choice rangeAnna
On giving the floristthe room to work
Give the florist the room and they will use it. Florist's Choice is the one product where the latitude works in your favour, because they build from whatever came in strong at market that morning rather than chasing a photograph taken in another season. Write the occasion in the notes and they will read it.
The real number
Prices, and What Arrives at the Door
Standard sizes. Delivery is $16.95 to any South Bowenfels address and does not change with the size of the order. One thing that is true across this industry and true of us: product photographs are usually shot at the premium or deluxe size, so a standard arrives smaller than the picture.
| Arrangement | Price | At the door | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Single Wrapped Red Rose | $42.95 | $59.90 | The floor. One stem, and the florist has nowhere to hide. |
| Florists Choice Sympathy Bunch | $74.50 | $91.45 | A service, and nothing else. |
| Florist's Choice Arrangement | $81.75 | $98.70 | When you would rather the florist decided. |
| Bright Mixed Gerbera Arrangement | $85.75 | $102.70 | Boxed, scentless, safe on a ward. |
| Rose & Carnation Arrangement | $89.95 | $106.90 | Familiar stems, own water, fits a bedside table. |
| Australian Natives Bunch | $126.20 | $143.15 | Three weeks in water, then months dried. |
Nobody has ever rung us to say the flowers were too cheap.
Sixty dollars lands at the same reception desk, on the same afternoon, as a hundred and forty.
Andrew Thomson, co-founder Settled before you order
Where it actually lands
Reception at a care facility, the villa door at Treeview, ward reception at the hospital. Staff carry it the last few metres.
Why the deadline is early
Late on a birthday is a disappointment. Late on a funeral cannot be undone. The deadline exists for the second one, because the florist needs what is left of the day to build it and run it out.
What we need from you
Full name plus the room or wing number. Roughly 60 beds at one address on Col Drewe Drive, and a first name will not find her.
Who makes it
A florist in or near South Bowenfels, on the day, from stock that came up the Great Western Highway from the Sydney market before the shop opened.
There Is No Lily's Florist Shop Anywhere Near Here
We do not have a shop in South Bowenfels and there is not one up the road with our name on it either. What we have is a florist in or close to the area who takes the order as a paid job and builds it out of what came into the shop that day. There are more than eight hundred of them on the network now, and Orange was one of the first towns on this side of the range to come on, back when we were still working out whether the idea held together at all.
So you do not get to stand in front of a bucket and point, which is a real thing to give up. And every florist reads a product slightly differently, which is the honest weakness of working this way. Most people ordering off this page are nowhere near the place, so the trade is usually worth making.
From the bench
Trained in North Carolina
Fifteen years on the bench
The Safe-Looking Bunch Causes the Trouble
Anna
Qualified floristTrained in North Carolina
Fifteen years on the bench
Most people send the biggest, sweetest-smelling thing they can afford, because that is what generous looks like. In a small room with another bed in it, that is the arrangement that causes the problem. One Oriental lily will scent the whole room by the second day, and once the anthers open the pollen gets on the bedding and does not come out. Rust orange, on white sheets. Do not wipe it. Lift it off with sticky tape.
The better news is that this is one of the kinder places in the country to receive flowers. Cold slows respiration, and respiration is what ages a cut stem, so the same rose that gives somebody in Sydney seven days will give ten here through the cooler two thirds of the year. Cold air on its own does a bouquet no harm at all. Frost is a different thing: it settles on the surface of a petal and collapses the cell wall underneath it, and that damage cannot be undone once it is done. What catches people out indoors is the dryness rather than the temperature. At nine hundred metres the air is thin and dry, and a heater running all evening through July takes it drier still. Top the water up every couple of days, which will do more than anything you can add to the order.
For a room like that I would send chrysanthemums or carnations ahead of anything fashionable. Chrysanthemums go eighteen to thirty days in a cool room and they do not sulk near a fruit bowl the way carnations and waxflower do. Carnations run eighteen to twenty four. Roses ten to fourteen. Winter is quietly the best time of year to be buying here, too, because tulips, ranunculus, stock and anemones are all in season from June, and the florist has more to work with in July than in January.
We do not deliver on Sundays and I would not want us to. The markets shut Saturday afternoon, so anything going out on a Sunday is Friday stock. Three days gone before it reaches the vase.
The part nobody puts on a landing page
Sometimes It Does Not Arrive at All
The worst thing that happens in this industry is an order taken, charged, and then never delivered at all. It lands on regional addresses more often than metro ones, for a reason that has nothing to do with flowers: an order gets accepted into an area with nobody actually confirmed to build it that day.
It is why we would rather tell you on the phone that we cannot make an afternoon than take the money and hope. A postcode with no florist in it is the one place that promise is worth checking before you type a card message, ours included.
The failure we actually see out here is smaller, and it is a handover rather than a florist. Flowers reach a care-home desk at a shift change and nobody logs where they went. So the docket now carries the wing or the room as well as the name of the facility, and if the desk cannot take a delivery the driver rings before leaving rather than after. It does not stop an arrangement going astray between the desk and the bed. It does mean we can tell you exactly where it stopped.
Practicalities
Cutoffs, Frost and the Number to Ring
Phone
1300 360 469, 7am to 6pm on weekdays and from 10am on Saturdays. A person answers it rather than a recording, and it is the fastest way to settle anything with a room number or a service time attached.
Cutoffs, and why
2pm on weekdays. 10am on Saturdays, because the market shuts Saturday afternoon and the florist only has what is left of the morning. No Sunday at all, for the same reason.
Delivery
$16.95 flat. It does not cover what some of these runs actually cost us, and it does not change with the size of the order either.
The cold morning rule
Every handover between the market floor and the front door is a chance for a stem to warm up or cool down, and the last one is the doorstep, where it waits until somebody opens the door. May through August that step is below freezing here most mornings. So the driver would rather hand it over than leave it, and if nobody answers and the safe place on the order is an exposed step, they ring before putting it down.
If something is wrong
Email [email protected] within 24 hours with photographs of the arrangement, front and back. The back is where a thin build shows. Or ring the number above. We would rather hear it from you than read it in a review, because by the time it is a review there is nothing left for us to put right.
Order before 2pm today and it is at the desk this afternoon. Careful with money, or ordering for somebody who is? Nothing about the delivery changes.
Everything under $60
Once it is placed
On the phones
2006 to 2013
After the Order, and the Call We Used to Get Most
The order goes to a florist in or near the area as a paid job and gets built that day out of what is in the shop. You will not get a photograph of it. If you want to know it landed, ring 1300 360 469 and we will find out. Weekdays and Saturday mornings.
Siobhan Thomson
Co-founderOn the phones
2006 to 2013
Back when I was still on the phones the care-home calls were hardly ever about the flowers, they were about the silence afterwards. A daughter in Sydney (three hours and a mountain away, which is no comfort at all from where she is sitting) told they had arrived on the Tuesday, ringing on the Thursday because her mum had not said a word about them, and you could hear her working out whether that meant her mum had not seen them or whether it meant something worse. Usually it meant nothing at all. She had rung her daughter about the grandkids and forgotten to mention a vase. That waiting is the hard part and I never did find a fix for it.
We also deliver nearby
Who wrote this 
The Kingscliff shop, bought in 2006. Lily's Florist started three years later.
Lily's Florist Australia · ABN 17 830 858 659 · 1300 360 469 · [email protected]
© 2009-2026 Lily's Florist.
Petal & Parcel
From the owners of Lily's Florist
Australian dried natives and Australian made gifts. Long lasting, zero waste, and they arrive ready to display. Dried flowers from $65, gifts from $28.95.
First order? Use
Shop Petal & Parcel → WELCOME10 for 10% off.petalandparcel.com.au
