Flowers for Bedford, MA

Long before it was a Route 128 bedroom town, Bedford answered the alarm of 1775 under its own banner — the Bedford Flag, the oldest complete flag known in the country, still lives in the town library. That history sits lightly over an everyday map of quiet Middlesex streets: the town center and common, the Great Road threading northwest toward Concord, the Springs neighborhood climbing past the Edith Nourse Rogers VA, and the wooded edges near Fawn Lake and the old Narrow Gauge rail trail that now carries walkers instead of trains. Two things give Bedford its steady flower rhythm — Hanscom Field on the Lincoln border, with its base housing and contractor offices, and the veterans hospital on Springs Road, which keeps a daily current of get-well and thinking-of-you arrangements moving through town.

Other Massachusetts cities.