Flowers for Abington, MA

Long before it was a bedroom town on the Route 3 commute, Abington was a shoe-and-tack place, and its center still keeps that old-New-England compactness — a tight grid of streets around Island Grove Park, the pond and its Civil War memorial where Garrison and Douglass once drew antislavery crowds under the trees. Flowers move through that geography easily. The center and North Abington are minutes apart; Ames Nowell State Park and the Beaver Brook neighborhoods sit just west; and the town's steady orders read like its calendar — anniversary roses for the capes off Plymouth Street, teacher bouquets carried to the schools, get-well arrangements running down Route 123 to Brockton or up Route 18 toward Weymouth. Graduation week at Abington High and the spring flush of showers keep the coolers turning before the summer weddings arrive.

Other Massachusetts cities.