Flowers for Vernon Hills, IL

Vernon Hills is one of those villages that barely existed until the 1970s and then grew up all at once around a shopping mall. Hawthorn — the mall and the retail district that sprawled out from it along Milwaukee Avenue — still sets the tone, and so does the office belt that followed, anchored by CDW's headquarters and a thicket of corporate campuses off Route 60. At the center sit Century Park and three man-made lakes the New Century Town subdivisions were planned around. That mix shapes what gets sent here: birthday and anniversary bouquets to the tidy homes ringing the lakes, congratulations and thank-you arrangements to desks in the Milwaukee Avenue offices, get-well flowers headed a few minutes northwest to Advocate Condell in Libertyville, and the steady sympathy work timed to services across Lake County. Distances are short; the trick is landing the arrangement before a recipient leaves a subdivision cul-de-sac or clocks out of an office park.

Other Illinois cities.