Sharyn, he has a snowball's chance in Hell of getting it back, "it's my Precious"!
I have downloaded the manuals, so give me a couple of days to peruse them and I'll see what I can come up with for you.
A quick tip: with closeup work, try to use a high fstop if possible to give depth of field and a lower ISO, probably either 100 or 200 otherwise you indroduce too much "noise", digital version of grain.
Try to use a solid color background so that the camera doesn't get confused on what it is supposed to be focussing on and have the flowers standing forward of this background rather than close to it, otherwise you introduce unwanted shadows.
To photograph a whole plant, do the opposite to the closeup and use a smaller number fstop eg f4, f5.6 and set the camera to ISO 200, stand back and zoom in with the tele to "frame" the image you want. also use a solid color background here as well.
A cheap background can be made by buying a very cheap white sheet, and dye it with a royal blue dye as this will contrast nicely with the green leaves of the plant. Maybe even make a grey or black one as well.
Hope this gives you some ideas to start with.