Wallsend Flower Delivery Today, House, Ward or Graveside

The birthday's today and you won't be at the table. If the flowers are going to a house, pop a mobile number in the notes in case nobody's home. For Wallsend Manor or UPA Woodlands Lodge on Lake Road, add the resident's full name and room number (the staff, in our experience, walk the flowers through). An 80th or a 90th? Order early, and they'll be there before the cake comes out.

Anna, on the bedside table

Small, and no vase needed. The Native Arrangement With Chocolates sits in wet foam in a silver cube, and its protea and leucadendron go well past a week. Afterwards, pull the leucadendrons out and stand them in an empty vase. They dry where they stand and keep their colour for months.

The funeral notice gives you a day, a time and a place. For the service, send flowers there: the chapel at Pettigrew Family Funerals on Harris Street, St Patrick's on Macquarie Street, or graveside at Wallsend Cemetery on Sandgate Road, with the funeral director and the start time in the notes. For the family, send them to the house a few days on. The card can simply say "With you in thought, today and after."

If the wake is at Wallsend Diggers on Tyrrell Street, name the function room. I learnt why at Twin Towns in Tweed Heads in 2007, carrying a white sympathy arrangement into a ninetieth birthday lunch by mistake. The birthday girl eyed the lilies and said, "Not yet, love." She was lovely about it. I wanted the carpet to swallow me.

Graveside, a vase tips over on uneven ground. A wreath lies flat and its flowers keep drinking from the wet foam ring, and the white chrysanthemums in the White Funeral Wreath outlast the roses beside them.

The ward number came off a text and might already be out of date. For John Hunter Hospital in New Lambton Heights, add their full name and ward. Hospital flowers go to the ward desk, in our experience, and the nurses take them in. On the ward, a card like "Rest up. Cuppa when you're home." says plenty. Home already? Send get well flowers to the house.

Anna's pick: 3 Gerberas In A Vase, in their own glass and with next to no scent, so the next bed won't notice them. Ward air is dry, so the glass wants topping up every day. The stems are hollow, and if a head starts to nod, recut two centimetres off that stem and stand it in shallow warm water for an hour.

Some orders aren't for a birthday, a funeral or a hospital bed: a thank-you for the carer who looked after Dad, a teacher at Wallsend Public School in December, or a sister who's had a rotten month and needs to know someone's thinking of her.

Anna, if you can't decide

The Lovely Lilac & Lime Bunch. Each lisianthus stem carries several buds that open one after another, so the bunch keeps filling out into its second week, and the green trick dianthus, a cousin of the carnation, holds its shape the whole time.