Australian flower cards carried messages on 93% of orders

Australian flower cards were more likely to say “thinking of you” than “happy birthday” over the year to June 2026. That phrase appeared on more than one in seven cards.

Melbourne florist Fig & Bloom reviewed a full year of anonymised messages sent with its flowers. The company released the findings on 12 July 2026 after reading the notes in aggregate and removing names.

Across the review, 93% of orders carried a written message. Given the option to skip the card, only about one in fourteen customers left it blank.

Most notes were brief. The average message ran to about 29 words, or two to three sentences, while the longest passed 400 words.

Birthdays, sympathy and support

Birthdays were the most common occasion at 26% of messages. However, sympathy made up 16%, and another 7% offered support to someone having a hard time.

Behind “thinking of you”, the phrases “happy birthday” and “love you” ran almost level. Fig & Bloom found Australians wrote “love you” about twice as often as “sorry”.

Nearly one in five messages used love in some form. By contrast, about one in ten cards carried an apology.

A third of messages ended with a row of kisses. In that group, “xx” was the clear favourite sign-off.

Emoji appeared far less often. Only about 6% of messages used one, and the emoji was almost always a heart.

Fig & Bloom called the project a year-long review of messages attached to online flower orders. Since customers wrote the notes at checkout, the cards captured what they chose to say during birthdays, grief and apologies.

On 12 July 2026, the Melbourne release argued Australians were more willing to name grief and love than they often get credit for. It also pointed to how few people left a card blank.

One pattern stood out in the year to June 2026: celebration and comfort sat close together. As a result, flower cards often carried support, sympathy and apology as well as birthday wishes.