Flowers for Mason City, IA

Meredith Willson grew up on the near north side of Mason City and turned it into River City — the trombones and the town band of The Music Man are his hometown made into a stage set, and the connection is not a marketing angle here, it is civic identity, from the Music Man Square museum to the summer band festival. Downtown carries that same self-regard in brick: the Federal Avenue theater blocks, the Prairie School storefronts, and the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel still open in the world, the Historic Park Inn on Central. Flowers thread through all of it every day — anniversary arrangements to the older neighborhoods, get-well orders out to MercyOne North Iowa on 4th Street SW, congratulations bouquets to the shops downtown, and a steady run west to Clear Lake, where the Surf Ballroom keeps its own calendar of events.

Other Iowa cities.