Towen Mountain Flower Delivery

You are sending to a place with gum trees over the drive, and you want the flowers to look like they belong there. A native bunch does that, for a birthday or no reason at all, and if nobody is home it copes on a shaded verandah table better than most. It looks a bit like something cut from the paddock. Up here that is the point.

Anna's call: banksia and protea stems are dense, so split the base a few centimetres before they go in the vase or they cannot drink. The cones dry intact afterwards and sit on a shelf for months.

Someone up here fed the animals or drove you down to Nambour when you could not drive yourself, and a text does not cover it. A thank-you bunch at their gate does.

In 2008, when Siobhan and I still did our own runs from the Kingscliff shop, I took one up a gravel driveway off Clothiers Creek Road, in the hills behind the Tweed coast, for a bloke who had fed a neighbour's cattle for a fortnight. The gate was chained. No reception. The van slid sideways every time I touched the brake. He came down on a quad bike, took the bunch, read the card, and said nothing for a good while. Then: took her long enough. Towen Mount Road has the same gates and the same gravel, so the notes matter more here than the address. If the gate is shut, the florist rings the number you gave us.

Anna, on a bunch that waits at a gate

Wax and the woody natives can sit in the shade of a gatepost for an hour, because a resinous or woody stem holds its water. A soft petal is losing moisture from the minute the wrap comes off and goes papery at the edge, so anything soft wants water inside thirty minutes.

You have a ward name off a text and no idea if it is still current. Still on the ward, send the hospital arrangement; back home up the hill, a get-well bunch goes to the house. At Nambour Selangor Private on Netherton Street the flowers go to reception, from what our florists have seen, and staff take them through, so put the full name and ward in the notes. Thinking of you, hope you're on the mend, is enough on the card.

A shared room does not want an oriental lily; the scent fills it and the next bed did not ask for that. Unscented Asiatics, or a boxed arrangement, because nobody on a ward is finding a vase.

Half the orders we get do not fit a heading: a promotion, a rough week, missing someone. You do not need a category. Anna has a view on this.

Roses. Cool nights with the windows open are exactly what a rose wants. Keep it out of the afternoon sun, give it that first hour in water, and the buds open instead of sitting closed and dropping.