Flowers for Wilmington, NC

Say you want roses on the table at a Front Street restaurant before an anniversary dinner: in Wilmington that order threads through a downtown the size of a small city grafted onto a beach town. The historic district — cobblestone blocks, the Cotton Exchange, the Riverwalk along the Cape Fear — is dense and walkable, but the Port City stretches far past it. Midtown and the UNCW corridor fill 28403; the shopping-and-medical belt runs out to Mayfaire and Ogden on 28405; the newer subdivisions sprawl south through Monkey Junction and down Carolina Beach Road in 28412. A driver's day might start at a Novant New Hanover Regional room on 17th Street, swing through a Landfall gate, and finish at a cottage a block off Wrightsville Beach. The film crews that gave the city its 'Hollywood East' nickname add their own steady trickle of wrap-party and congratulations orders.

Other North Carolina cities.