Flowers for Tarboro, NC

Tarboro is older than most of the towns around it — chartered in 1760 on the west bank of the Tar River, seat of Edgecombe County, and holder of one of only two original town commons still surviving in the United States, a fifteen-acre green laid out in colonial days and still the heart of the place. That heritage shows in a 45-block National Register historic district of Federal and Victorian homes, tree-lined streets, and the churches that give the sympathy calendar its rhythm. Beyond the grid the country opens into flat coastal-plain tobacco and cotton fields, the river bends toward Princeville just across the water, and the two-lanes run out toward the county's scattered farm addresses. Deliveries follow that shape: fast and predictable in the historic core, a little longer out to the river farms and the Princeville side. ECU Health Edgecombe Hospital on Hospital Drive carries the local get-well and new-baby traffic.

Other North Carolina cities.