Flowers to Tweed Heads South, on the Right Side of the Border by 2pm

Someone has died, and you are trying to do the right thing from a distance without knowing the family's plans. The first decision is simple: is it going to the home or to the service? If you are not sure, send it to the home. A bunch on the kitchen bench in the days after a death says you are thinking of them, and it never arrives at the wrong place.

If it is for the service, we need the funeral director's name, the date and the chapel rather than the family's address, and we route it as funeral flowers so it lands where the service is.

Anna, on sending into the suburb that holds the crematorium

Keep the card message simple. "Thinking of you, with love" does more than a long paragraph that tries too hard. For the flowers, white still reads right for a traditional service, lilies and chrysanths and roses, but ask for pollen-free lilies if anyone might be bothered by the staining. If the family has asked for a celebration of life, that is your cue for colour and natives, not muted whites. And do not let anyone send you hydrangeas for a summer graveside here. They will wilt before the service is over.

This is the order we see most into Tweed Heads South, and it rarely has an occasion attached. A mum or a dad living alone, a long way from the kids, insisting on the phone that they do not need anything. You send flowers because you cannot send yourself. If nobody is home, the driver leaves them in a shaded spot out of the heat and we note a contact number so someone can let them know. For the over-fifty-fives villages, expect the flowers to go through reception rather than straight to the door.

The question I heard on the phones more than almost any other was whether flowers were a waste on someone who lives alone and would not make a fuss. They are not. The ones living alone are exactly the ones who ring their daughter to say the flowers came, then ring back two days later to say they have opened right up. Pick something that keeps giving over a week. Carnations and chrysanths in a bunch still look like something on day eight, long after a dozen roses have dropped, so this is the order where I would skip the roses on purpose. And if you are sending colour rather than white, go bold and saturated, not pastel. Older eyes read a vivid bunch from across the room where a soft one fades into the bench.

If the address is a residential aged-care home rather than a private house, and there are a few of them tucked off Minjungbal Drive and through the golf-course pocket, two things change. Send a box arrangement instead of a vase, because the staff have no time to top up water and a box will not tip. And if the person has dementia, leave the exotic centrepiece and go for something they will know on sight, roses, daisies, a bit of lavender. A familiar flower tied to a memory does more in that room than anything showy.

Your person is in hospital and you want to do something other than sit by the phone. Two hospitals serve this suburb, one on each side of the border: Tweed Valley Hospital down at Cudgen on the New South Wales side, and John Flynn up at Tugun across the Queensland border. Tell us which one, plus the patient's full name and ward, and place the hospital order once they are on a ward rather than still in emergency. If it is only an overnight stay, send to the home instead, so it does not turn up the morning after they have been discharged.

Flowers go to the ward reception desk, and from what our florists see, the staff take them through to the bed.

Anna, from the bench: do not send the big lilies to a ward. Those Orientals look generous and they are the wrong call: the pollen stains everything, the scent is too much in a closed room, and from what our florists have seen, some wards turn them back at the desk. Send something low and bright instead, in a box that does not need a vase the nurses have no time to find. Carnations, spray roses, a few get well gerberas. If it is oncology, intensive care or the special care nursery, hold off and send to the home when they are out, because those wards tend not to take flowers at all.

Plenty of orders do not fit a tidy box. You have heard some news, you want to send something appropriate today, and you do not want to spend twenty minutes choosing between six photos.

Hand it over. The one I steered uncertain callers toward for years is the Florists Choice Sympathy Bunch. It is built from whatever came into the cool room strongest that morning, so you are paying for the florist's judgement on the day, not a fixed recipe off a photo. It does double duty too: it works at the funeral home, then has a second life on the kitchen bench for a week after. If it is not grief at all, if you just want to land something warm on a kitchen bench, say so and the florist will build it bright and seasonal instead.