Tintenbar Flowers, Delivered to the Name on the Gate

Why the Plateau Air Fools People, and What It Does to a Bunch Sent to Tintenbar

Anna, qualified florist | three years on the Pottsville phones, most of them for flowers going somewhere the caller could not quite picture

People assume the hinterland is cooler than the coast because it sits up on the plateau, and it is, a degree or two on a good day. A February afternoon out here still runs to about 28 degrees, though, and the humidity does not care about the elevation. A soft-petalled bunch that would sail through a milder Sydney January starts to brown and soften in a Tintenbar kitchen by the second or third afternoon. The plateau does not save it. Air that sits warm and still like that pushes a cut flower along faster than a cooler room ever would, and that is where the trouble starts. That is the gap between what the photo promises and what is standing in the vase on day three.

The mechanism is boring and it is always the same. Warm, still, humid air is where botrytis takes hold. Botrytis is grey mould. It starts as tiny freckles on the softest petals, roses and ranunculus first, and once it is in, the whole bloom folds in about a day. I had a caller in Toowoomba once who could not work out why her mother's arrangement had gone papery by the second afternoon on a hot verandah, and the answer was her choice of flowers; the florist had built it fine. Roses hold up better than delphiniums out that way. Chrysanthemums and natives barely notice the weather at all.

There is a supply side to this too, and it works in Tintenbar's favour. Flowers for a Northern Rivers order come off the Brisbane market, roughly two hours of refrigerated road down the motorway. Most people picture a Sydney run; up here it is Brisbane. And some of the best natives, the proteas and leucadendrons, are grown right up on the Alstonville plateau a few minutes north, so half the time a native bunch sent to Tintenbar has travelled less distance than the person who sent it. So my rule for summer is simple. Send natives or chrysanthemums, and keep the soft English cottage look for the cooler months. A native bunch holds its own for a fortnight out here. A soft one gives you a weekend. And out here that fortnight counts, because the person it is going to might not see another soul for a few days, and you want the flowers still going strong when they do.

* The rural-address checklist our florists work through for a Tintenbar order. Tell us as much of it as you can at checkout, or leave it to the phone team.

From the Brisbane Market to a Tintenbar Driveway

There is no warehouse out here sending these out. A partner florist in or close to Tintenbar builds the arrangement the morning it goes, from stems bought that week. That is the whole point of the network.

* What happens to your order once it lands in the Lily's Florist network.

We have been putting flowers into this part of the Ballina hinterland for as long as the network has existed, and it only exists because of orders like these. It began years ago with a little shop we ran up the coast, where the phone kept ringing for flowers headed somewhere we could not drive to ourselves, so we went and found florists who could. Back before 2013, orders out this way went through our partner florist over in Byron Bay, on the same daily courier run that reached Ballina, and it simply kept going another fifteen minutes inland to the properties out here. The network has grown a fair bit since. The reach into Tintenbar has not changed.

After You Order

Once you have paid, the order goes to a partner florist in or near Tintenbar as a paid job, with every address note you gave us attached. They build it that morning, the driver takes the run out through Alstonville, and it is hand delivered to the gate or the spot you nominated. You do not have to do anything else.

If something does not look right, or you are not sure it arrived, ring the phone team on 1300 360 469, 7am to 6pm on weekdays and from 10am Saturdays, or email [email protected]. When you ring, our own team here in Australia picks up, real people who can actually chase your order down for you. The rural addresses out here were the one thing that used to trip us up in the early years, a driver missing a driveway that had no number on the road, so now we confirm the property and the gate before anything leaves rather than after. It is a small change and it fixed almost all of it.

A word from Siobhan

The part nobody warns you about is the wait afterwards. You send flowers home to your mum or dad, and then you sit there wondering if they even arrived, because a lot of the folks out this way are not going to text you a photo of a vase. That silence is normal out here. Give it a day before you read anything into it. And if you genuinely cannot settle, ring us and we will chase the confirmation for you. We are a mum and dad who built this at the dinner table, so we understand ringing to check on a delivery better than most.

For anything time-sensitive, the phone is faster than email. We would always rather hear from you the same day than find out a week later that something slipped.

ABN: 17 830 858 659