If you ever need a florist in Australia...

I love sending people flowers. I love receiving them too, so I've always figured if sending them gives even half the joy I get from an unsolicited bunch of flowers, then it's money well spent. My mother is an extremely talented amateur gardener & professional floral designer, (she does lots of super stylish weddings and sweeps the board at the local garden show with her flowers too), so I grew up learning to appreciate the glory of a good florist.

One of my best friends from school lives in Sydney now with her new husband. When they married last year I couldn't attend as I had already been asked to read at A's wedding in London over the same weekend and, lacking a tardis, would have been hard set to get from New York to Australia to London and back to New York in the space of five days.

So back to flowers. I spent hours on the old interweb looking for a florist in Australia that could do a bunch of flowers gorgeous enough for my beautiful friend. She also happens to work at Pacific Magazines, so a certain standard of chic was required too.

I drew a complete & utter blank. Maybe the hip Oz florists fear the interweb, because they certainly aren't lurking on Google. Oh God the horrors. It took me back fifteen years to the good old days of Teleflora: yellow, purple and white mixed sheaths of maidenhair fern, chrysanths, freesias, carnations & gypsophila (baby's breath), all tied up with that shiny plastic-y ribbon.

Then, after many hours of fruitless searching, I came across Prickly Pear, and wept for joy. Finally: an Australian floral designer with some balls. They describe themselves as 'Australia's best on-line florist' and, if one hadn't checked out the truly dismal competition, one might think that they were guilty of hubris. But no.

I chose these for her 'Sorry A grabbed me for her wedding first' bunch:And these for her 'Happy housewarming my darling girl' bunchI can't recommend them highly enough: ravishing arrangements, great communication, prompt delivery. Shiny gold stars all round.