We read a year of the messages sent with our flowers, to see what people say when they have something to say. The findings are quietly moving.
There is a small, particular pause that happens at the checkout. The flowers are chosen, the address is in, and then a box appears, empty, waiting for the message. It is the one part of a gift no one can write for you, and for a moment most people stall in front of it. Then they write. Across the past year, almost everyone did.
We looked at a full year of card messages sent with Fig & Bloom flowers, read in aggregate and stripped of names. We were not hunting for anything in particular. What came back is a fairly honest portrait of how Australians say the things they find hardest to say.
We almost always say something
Nine in ten orders carried a written message. Only about one in fourteen left the card blank. Given a blank space and the option to skip it, people reach for words. The average message runs to about twenty-nine words, two or three sentences; a devoted few wrote small essays, and the longest this year ran past four hundred words. The flowers may be the object, but the card is where the actual gift goes.
The two reasons we reach for flowers
The most common occasion, by a clear margin, is a birthday: a quarter of all messages. The quieter finding sits just behind it. Roughly one in six messages is a condolence, or a word of support for someone having a hard time. Celebration and comfort, almost back to back. For a country supposedly awkward about grief, a striking amount of what we send carries it. "I don't have the words" turns out to be the message, and the flowers finish the sentence.
Birthdays lead, but comfort is close behind
"I don't have the words" is, itself, the message. The flowers finish the sentence.
The line we reach for most
The single most-written phrase of the year is not "happy birthday." It is "thinking of you," the most-written line of the year, on more than one in seven cards. "Happy birthday" and "love you" run almost exactly level behind it. Strip out the ordinary joins and the words that remain tell the story on their own: dear, family, sending, beautiful, proud, loss, thoughts, joy. A vocabulary that travels from a party to a funeral without much changing its tone, because the underlying job barely changes. Let someone know they were thought of.
The words we reach for
Love, and sorry
We write "love you" about twice as often as we write "sorry," and both turn up a lot. Nearly one in five messages says love in some form; about one in ten is an apology, from the genuinely contrite to the gently self-aware ("sorry for being such a flop this year"). For plenty of people, flowers are still the apology you send when the conversation is too hard to start.
How we sign off
A third of messages end in a row of kisses, with "xx" the clear favourite and a committed handful pushing past seven. The emoji barely makes the card: only about six in a hundred use one, and when they do it is almost always a heart. For all that we live on our phones, the flower card stays a stubbornly handwritten, slightly old-fashioned place. That seems to be the point of it.
In their own words
We will not reprint a single name. But a year of messages, read end to end, leaves you with a few you do not forget.
The cheeky ones
"Happy birthday to our most favourite aunty ever. We know you don't love getting flowers, they aren't recycled and will die, but we love you, it's your birthday."
"Whatever age you're claiming, no one's buying it. You're glowing, timeless."
The honest ones
"I miss you." (that was the whole message)
"I'm so sorry I haven't been there for you the way you've been there for me. It's not because I don't care, quite the opposite."
And the ones that stop you
"Thinking of you today, Mum, the day he touched earth and heaven. He is never forgotten."
"You did it. You crushed the hardest day you'll ever have. I love you endlessly, and I'm so proud of you."
The part they keep
What the year keeps showing is that the flowers are the easy part. The hard, good part is the line underneath, the one only the sender can write. It is worth a few extra seconds at that blank box. Whatever you manage to say, someone keeps it long after the flowers are gone. When you send flowers with us, your words are printed on a gold-foiled card and tucked in with the arrangement, which we photograph before it leaves the studio, so you know exactly what landed on the doorstep.
A few words on a card, carried by something considered.
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If you like a considered approach to flowers, you might also enjoy our guide to what is in season across the year.
Based on a full year of Fig & Bloom card messages to June 2026. Messages were aggregated and de-identified; every example is anonymised, with names and identifying detail removed.
