Kirkland's geography does something for romance that most suburbs cannot: the whole downtown faces west across Lake Washington, so the sunset lands on the water with the Seattle skyline in silhouette behind it, and the city put a public pier at Marina Park right in the middle of the view. People propose there. They propose at Juanita Beach Park a couple of miles north, on the Houghton Beach lawn, on the forest trails at Saint Edward State Park above Juanita Drive NE, and on the gravel of the Cross Kirkland Corridor where it runs behind the old warehouses. Every one of those places is public ground with no front desk, no street number that accepts a signature and nobody to hold a box for two hours. So the first thing to understand about romantic flowers in this city is where they can actually land: a home, a hotel front desk, an office lobby, a restaurant that has agreed in advance, or your own two hands at a time you choose. Have the flowers delivered somewhere that can receive them, then carry them to the view. That one adjustment saves more Kirkland proposals than any design decision.
For deliveries that do have an address, the city splits into two problems. Downtown and the blocks along Lake Street South, Central Way and 6th Street are increasingly apartment and condo buildings, which means a front desk, a call box or a locked lobby — and parcel lockers, which are fine for a package and useless for flowers. Give us a unit number, a phone number and, if the building has a desk, a note that it is fine to leave the arrangement there. Up the hill, Norkirk, Market, Moss Bay, Houghton, Rose Hill and Bridle Trails are house neighborhoods with real porches; in the northern tier of 98034 — Juanita, Finn Hill, Holmes Point, Kingsgate — the lanes run long, wooded and sometimes gated, and a single visible number can serve several houses. It rains most days from October through May, so tell us where the cover is. A surprise is only a surprise if it is dry, and a driver with a working phone number will wait a minute rather than abandon a box on open concrete.