Flower Delivery to The Junction NSW, Same Day

A seventieth, an eightieth, Mum's birthday or the birthday of the neighbour who keeps an eye on her, ordered from a long way off. For a Federation cottage on Glebe Road, put a mobile in the notes. For Anglican Care Scenic Lodge on Scenic Drive, add the room number, and in our experience reception walks the flowers through to the room. Start with our 70th birthday flowers.

Every retirement village and aged-care home I delivered to came with an audience, which is worth knowing if your flowers are going to Scenic Lodge. Early 2008, I took lilies to Noble Lakeside Park, a retirement village in Kingscliff, with Asha, nine months old, campaigning from her car seat. Residents drifted to the windows. "Is that your little mate?" She's nine months, I said. She is not on the books. I drove home with pollen down my shirt, looking like the intern.

Anna's call: if the birthday flowers have lilies in them, pinch off the anthers (the pollen-covered tips) as each flower opens. Wet pollen brushes away, but dry pollen bonds to fabric, so lift any that lands with sticky tape and never wipe it. Do that and lilies are a lovely pick for a birthday.

Often all you have is a funeral notice, a church and a time. Funeral flowers go to the church or chapel, say St Joseph's on Kenrick Street or the Simplicity Funerals chapel on Brunker Road, Adamstown, with the funeral director and start time in the notes. Sympathy flowers to the house suit the week after the funeral. A short card is fine: "So sorry we can't be there. With love." Nobody needs flowers when someone has died, and nearly everybody keeps the card.

White flowers suit most services, and they show every mark by about day four. Kept out of the sun in a cool room they stay clean longest, which is where the Gorgeous Whites Bunch belongs once it's home.

All you know is they've had an operation. At Lingard Private Hospital on Merewether Street, the closest hospital to The Junction, add their full name and ward; from what our florists have seen, the front desk takes the flowers up. Home already? Send get well flowers to the house. For the card: "Hope you're up and about soon."

Anna, on the bedside table

A bedside fits a water jug, a phone and one small thing, so go compact and self-contained. For a longer stay, natives: woody stems that shrug off dry hospital air, barely any scent for the next bed, and in my experience they look much the same after a week. I'd pick the Australian Native Arrangement.

Plenty of orders aren't a birthday, a funeral or a hospital stay: an anniversary, a thank-you for a teacher at The Junction Public School on Union Street, or flowers just because. Anna has a view on these.

A mixed bunch doesn't finish all at once. In the Rose, Gerbera & Lilies Bunch the roses and gerberas carry the first week, and the lily buds keep opening into the second, which is why it suits an anniversary, a thank-you or no reason at all: there's always something just coming out.