Lake County, IN Flowers, Delivered by Hand

Twenty-One Towns, One County Seat

The seat is Crown Point, sitting in the middle of Lake County, whose northern towns run one into the next. Hammond, Gary and Whiting share street grids at their borders, while Lowell at the southern end is surrounded by open field. Twenty-one towns have pages beneath this one, and the town page is the faster route when the town is already known.

Twenty-nine ZIP codes sit under those towns, which is more than most counties in Indiana carry. The seat runs on 46307, the numbers in the 464 range cover the northern city blocks, and 46356 reaches the southern farms. A five-digit code on the order does more work than the street line does, because it is the code that decides which florist takes the job.

Distance is the reason the code matters. An address at the top of Lake County and one at the bottom are the better part of forty minutes apart on a good day, and a wrong ZIP can put an order the whole of that distance from where it was meant to go. The order form takes both, so it costs nothing to check the code against the street before the order goes in.

Browse by Size, Not by Picture

Photographs of arrangements are taken in studios, and a bouquet that fills the frame there can be smaller than expected on a kitchen counter. Reading the stated size beats reading the picture. The catalog at the arrangement pages gives the size next to every design, and stepping up one size is the simplest way to make a piece look intentional in a large room.

Shape follows the room after that. A tall arrangement suits a reception counter or a hall table where it will be seen from a distance. A compact one suits a bedside, a desk or a table people sit around. For an apartment in one of the northern Lake County towns, compact is nearly always the better guess, because the surface it will end up on is not large.

The Hospital Room and the Front Desk

Hospitals in Lake County are numerous and large, and each has its own way of taking flowers. Franciscan Health Crown Point, Methodist Hospitals and St Mary Medical Center all accept arrangements at a reception point rather than at the ward door, and all of them need a patient name spelled as the hospital holds it plus a room number. Intensive care units generally do not take flowers at all, which is worth a phone call to the family first.

Care homes work the same way and are easier. Lincolnshire Health & Rehabilitation Center in Merrillville and Munster Med-Inn in Munster both take a delivery at the desk, and a wing name on the order saves a member of staff a walk. For a house in Schererville or Dyer, a unit number, a gate code where there is one, and a phone number for the recipient are the three lines that decide whether the first attempt lands.

A Central Time Cutoff, Not an Eastern One

An order has to be placed before 1 PM Central time to go out the same business day, and Central is the surprise in Lake County, IN. Most of the state keeps a different hour, so a sender who has looked up the state and not the county is working to a deadline that is off by sixty minutes. On this side of the county line the recipient's clock is the one that counts.

Flower deliveries go out Monday through Saturday only, and Sunday delivery is not available anywhere in Lake County. Saturday is therefore the last day of any given week, and a Sunday date has to be met the day before. In the four heavy weeks around Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas and Easter, the same-day hour can move earlier still, so an order placed midweek is worth more than one placed on the morning itself.

Deliveries land between 9 AM and 7 PM, which covers a working day at both ends. A specific hour can be asked for in the notes and a florist will try for it, though it is not something that can be promised. An office address is best given with a floor and a department, and a Friday is a better bet than a Saturday when the building may be shut.

Sympathy Flowers and the Funeral Home Desk

Sheets Funeral Home & Cremation Services in Lowell and Baran Funeral Home in Whiting both take arrangements ahead of a service, and both want the name of the person who died on the order. That name is how a piece gets set beside the right service in a building that may be running two in a day. Standing arrangements go to the funeral home; a smaller piece for the family goes to the house afterwards.

For a family home in Merrillville or Munster, the useful thing to remember is that the week after a funeral is quieter and lonelier than the week of it. A delivery timed for then arrives when the visitors have stopped coming. It is a small piece of thought and it is the one people remember years later.

Substitution, Size and Value

Flower types may be substituted for what a florist has that morning, and the honest version of that policy is worth stating plainly. The type of arrangement itself does not change: the size stays, the shape stays, and the value stays. A stem that has gone out of season in this part of Indiana is swapped for another in the same color family, and the utmost care goes into keeping the finished piece close to the one that was ordered.

A picture of the finished arrangement is sent after the florist has built it, at no extra charge, so the sender sees what actually went out. Anything that looks wrong should be raised inside three days of delivery, since flowers are perishable and a later complaint cannot be checked. Three outcomes are possible from there: a replacement, a refund or a partial credit.

The rest of the state, county by county, is listed at the Indiana county index. From here, Porter County, IN begins immediately to the east, while Newton County, IN lies to the south and Cook County, IL starts across the state line to the west.