Flowers Delivered to Werri Beach, Half the Doors Shut

Why a Werri Beach bunch leans hardy

Anna, our qualified florist. She cut her teeth in North Carolina, then on a boutique bench at Salt before she joined us.

Here is what people get backwards about a coast like this. The salt air is kinder to most flowers than people expect. The humidity holds moisture in the petals, and a bunch will often last longer here than it would in a dry inland heat. The catch is the dense, packed blooms. When the humidity climbs past ninety in the warm months you get botrytis, which is just grey mould, and it settles into the tight centre of a garden rose, a peony or a dahlia before anyone is home to notice. Put a hydrangea on an exposed porch in summer and it will not see out the afternoon.

Nothing is grown down here, so the stems come off the Sydney market at Flemington, down the highway and into the cool room the same morning, in the shop before lunch. What earns a spot on an exposed doorstep is the waxy, tough stem: proteas, banksia, flannel flower, chrysanthemums, carnations. They shrug off the humidity, and the salt spray on the frontage, the way a soft rose never will. I could tell within two days which bunches had gone out soft. The dense ones went first.

One more thing about this stretch. People here have paid a premium to live on it, the highest mortgages of any town along this coast, and they can spot a mean bunch from across the room. So I would rather the money went into the flowers than the wrapping. A proper focal bloom and a full hand of stems reads as generous. Gaps and cellophane do not.

What to Send to Werri Beach

You have seen the bunches. The harder part on this coast is landing one at a house that might be empty until the weekend. A fair few of the orders here are teacher and colleague thank-you flowers, given how much of Werri Beach works in the schools up the line. A good share are get-well bunches to Kiama hospital, which in our experience runs more to rehab and the slower recovery of an older ward than to quick day surgery. For those the florist boxes it so it travels, keeps it low-scent for a shared room, and picks stems that will still be going a fortnight on.

After You Order

Once it is in, it goes to the florist closest to the run and they build it that morning. Years ago we ran the deliveries ourselves. Standing outside a hospital in the heat, a baby screaming in the back of the car, five minutes to get a bunch to a reception desk, no park in sight. So the wanting-to-know-it-arrived part, I get completely. If you want to check it landed, ring us on 1300 360 469, 7am to 6pm weekdays and from 10am Saturdays. We would rather take the call than have you sit there refreshing your email.

Andrew, the other half of Lily's Florist

The holiday-home streets are the prettiest run we do and the most aggravating, half of them shut up when the van gets there. The order that used to catch us out was the one that landed at a house closed till Friday. It sat on the porch in the sun and the first we heard about it was a bad review. So we changed the default. The van does not go out now until someone confirms a person will be there, or names a safe spot. It costs a phone call. It beats a wilted bunch on a locked verandah. And if they have not texted you back, give it a day. On a holiday street they might not even be up there yet.