Flowers for Needham, MA

Needham is one of those towns that feels far more suburban than its distance from Boston suggests — the Charles River curls around its northern edge, separating it from Newton, and the whole place is barely eleven miles from Copley. The heart of it is the Center: Great Plain Avenue with its shops, the library, and the brick blocks where a birthday or anniversary bouquet lands most often. North of there, Needham Heights climbs toward Route 128 and the office park where TripAdvisor and a cluster of tech tenants pull a steady run of client and coworker deliveries to the front desk. Add the commuter-rail stations feeding the Needham Line into Back Bay, the neighborhoods around Needham High and Memorial Park, and Beth Israel Deaconess on West Street, and a local florist's day here is a tidy loop of residential streets, offices, and one hospital rather than a long rural haul.

Other Massachusetts cities.