Love Romance flowers in Columbia

Where romance deliveries actually go in Columbia sorts into four kinds of address, each with its own failure mode. Apartments and lofts are the biggest category and the most error-prone: the blocks along Greene, Blossom, Devine and Assembly near the University of South Carolina, the Main Street and Vista loft conversions, the newer buildings around the BullStreet District, and the complexes strung out along Garners Ferry Road, Two Notch and Harbison Boulevard. Complex name alone is not an address — a driver needs the building and the unit, and a gate or callbox code if there is one. Front-door houses are the easiest: Shandon, Old Shandon, Rosewood and Melrose Heights in 29205 are brick-street bungalows with deep shaded porches, and Heathwood and Wales Garden are a few blocks away with long driveways. Forest Acres in 29206 and the Trenholm Road corridor behave the same way. Hotel desks work well when the timing is right — Hotel Trundle on Taylor Street, the Hilton Columbia Center on Senate in the Vista, the Sheraton at 1400 Main, the Columbia Marriott on Hampton, Aloft on Lady Street, the Graduate on Pendleton by the Horseshoe, the Hampton Inn on Gervais and the Hyatt Place in the Vista all accept arrangements against a guest name and a check-in date. Gated and lake addresses are the slow ones: Wildewood and Spring Valley in 29223, Lake Carolina and Killian in 29229, and the Lake Murray shoreline through Ballentine, Dutch Fork and Chapin in 29063 and 29036, where private drives and unmarked mailboxes mean a same-day order near the cutoff usually will not land.

Proposals are their own category, and Columbia gives you unusually good places to do one. Riverbanks Zoo and Garden spans the Saluda River with a botanical garden on the Lexington County side that is the most photographed garden in the Midlands, especially in the spring bulb and early-summer rose windows. Saluda Shoals Park in Irmo sits on the same river a few miles upstream with river overlooks and open lawn. The Three Rivers Greenway runs the Congaree, Saluda and Broad through Cayce, West Columbia and Riverfront Park at the old Columbia Canal, which gives you a walk with a skyline behind it. The USC Horseshoe, the university's original 1800s quad under old oaks, is the sentimental choice for two alumni and is a short walk from the Gervais Street studio. Further out, Congaree National Park at Hopkins — old-growth bottomland hardwood forest with a boardwalk through champion trees — is the one that does not look like anywhere else, and Sesquicentennial State Park on Two Notch and Harbison State Forest off Broad River Road cover the Northeast and Northwest. For any of these, do not have flowers delivered to the park. There is no front desk, no one to accept a handoff, and a bouquet sitting in a July parking lot for an hour is a liability. Take delivery at home or at your hotel that morning and carry them. If you need the flowers to appear at the moment, book the two-hour window for a residence, then collect them.