Anniversary flowers in Montgomery

An anniversary in Montgomery almost always resolves to one of two evenings, and knowing which one you are buying for decides where the flowers should go. The first is a downtown riverfront evening: a room on the Tallapoosa Street convention block at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel and Spa at the Convention Center or the Embassy Suites beside it, dinner at Central on Coosa Street or Wintzell's Oyster House a few blocks over, maybe a show at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre inside the Renaissance, then a walk down to Riverwalk Stadium and the old Union Station shed where the Alabama River bends past the city. The second is a Cloverdale evening: dinner at Vintage Year or Sinclair's, a film at the Capri Theatre — a genuine single-screen art house in Old Cloverdale rather than a nostalgia prop — and a walk back through 36106's oak-shaded blocks. The two evenings want different deliveries. The riverfront version is a front-desk handoff timed to check-in. The Cloverdale version is a porch or a kitchen counter, delivered earlier in the day so it is already there when the two of you leave the house.

Then there is the anniversary that is not a night out at all. A great many Montgomery anniversary orders land on a house, and the residential map here rewards a little specificity. Old Cloverdale and the Garden District (36106) and Capitol Heights (36107) are the bungalow-and-front-porch part of town, where a covered entry means a delivery can safely sit for twenty minutes. Edgewood and Normandale (36111), Dalraida and the Perry Hill corridor (36109) and the Halcyon, McGehee and Woodley blocks (36116) are the mid-century family grid — driveways, side doors, carports. Carriage Hills, Arrowhead, Sturbridge and Wynlakes (36117) and the Hampstead development out toward Pike Road (36064) are newer and partly gated, and a gate code or a call-on-arrival number in the order notes is worth more there than anything you write on the card. North and west, Chisholm (36110) and 36108 are close-in city runs. Past the line the 60-mile radius takes in Prattville (36066 and 36067) minutes from the shop, Millbrook (36054), Coosada, Deatsville, Wetumpka (36092) on the Coosa, Tallassee, and south toward Troy on US-231.

A handful of destinations sit far enough out of the city to be worth naming separately, because they change the delivery clock. The Marriott at Capitol Hill in Prattville, on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, is the closest hotel on this entire grid to the design bench — a few minutes rather than a river crossing — which makes a Prattville anniversary weekend the easiest timed drop we handle here. Wind Creek Wetumpka, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians property on the Coosa, is about forty minutes out and takes front-desk deliveries with a guest name and arrival date. Back in town, Blount Cultural Park on the east side holds the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts on the same landscaped grounds, which is the standing answer to what to do for a milestone anniversary in this city; flowers for a Shakespeare Festival evening go to the house rather than the theatre, because nobody wants to hold an arrangement through a three-act play. The Hilton Garden Inn on the EastChase side, the Drury Inn and Suites, the DoubleTree by Hilton Montgomery Downtown, Hampton Inn and Suites Montgomery Downtown and Staybridge Suites fill out the front-desk options, and all of them will hold a delivery for a guest — the two things they need are the reservation surname and the check-in date.