Flowers for Paramus, NJ

Paramus is a single-ZIP Bergen County borough — 07652 covers all of it — and it is routinely cited as one of the highest-grossing retail ZIP codes in the United States. Garden State Plaza and Bergen Town Center sit on the Route 4 side, Paramus Park on Route 17, and the interchange where those two highways cross is the borough's real center of gravity. Behind the highways is an ordinary suburb: Bergen Community College at 400 Paramus Road, Paramus Catholic just up the same road, the municipal golf course, and Van Saun County Park with the Bergen County Zoo inside it over on Forest Avenue. The Valley Hospital's campus at 4 Valley Health Plaza brings a steady flow of get-well orders. Addresses here are easy to find; the variables are traffic and who is authorized to take the flowers.

The Paramus address people most often send flowers to is The Valley Hospital, and it is the one that needs checking first. Valley's published guidelines prohibit flowers for immunocompromised patients and in the NICU, so acceptance has to be confirmed for the specific recipient and the specific unit before an order is placed — not assumed from the fact that the hospital exists and takes visitors. If the unit says no, the right move is to agree another destination or a later date with the family, or to plan a home delivery for after discharge; a reception desk is not a holding area and should not be treated as one. The same caution travels to the other receiving points in the borough: an office suite inside the Route 4 and Route 17 corridor signs for deliveries at a desk that keeps business hours, and a Route 17 hotel will hold a bouquet for a guest who has not checked in yet, which is rarely what the sender pictured.

Other New Jersey cities.