Flowers Delivered to Whitfield, House or Aged Care Room

You are interstate and have not been up in a while. At Regis on McManus Street they reach reception, and staff walk them through. Put the full name and wing in the notes. A thinking of you bunch. Card line: no reason, just wanted these for you.

Anna on what fits beside a bed

The room is small and the table already holds a lamp, a phone and a glass. Low and boxed beats tall and wrapped, and gerberas wired at the neck hold up.

Someone has died and you are working out where to send. If the service is at a funeral home on Pease Street in Manoora, put the deceased's surname on the card so staff can match it. Sent to the house instead, they arrive over two or three days as people hear. Card line: with love, from all of us.

Anna on colour and timing

Whites and creams do not compete with what the room carries. The florists I worked with rang the funeral director for the window: too early sits in a back room, too late misses it.

An eightieth is the one you cannot be at, and the café at Regis is open every day, so families turn up. Same-day orders go into the afternoon run, so order the day before if you want them there for the visitors. Anna's call: for a birthday you want colour on arrival, so gerberas or roses. A lily in bud peaks around day four, for a gift still going next week.

Some orders fit none of the above. A friend has had a hard month, a neighbour fed the cat for two weeks, nothing happened and you just want to send something.

Take a low boxed arrangement with chrysanthemums running through it. The box is the vase, so it works at a front door, a bedside table or a desk, and the chrysanthemums are what carry it through a Cairns fortnight.