Groton is probably one of the most beautiful towns within an hour's drive of Boston. In and around the town center are tree-shaded streets lines with historic old homes and churches, while a short distance away from the center are a number of apple orchards and farms. The photo shown here, which was taken in October of 2006, gives a view of a church that sits along a village green at the eastern edge of the center of town.For a larger version of this photo, go to the Groton, MA photo on the Travel Guide of America site.
The Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard is considered by many to be a playground of the rich and famous as well as a place that can get pretty wild and crazy during the summer in spots. But much of it is charming and sedate, feeling a lot like Cape Cod used to be before big parts of it became commercialized. And Edgartown is about as charming a village as you'll find, with white clapboard colonials, tree-shaded lanes, stunning water views, and refined shops and restaurants. The photo shown here, which was taken in the early 1990s, gives just a glimpse of this beautiful village near the southeastern edge of the Vineyard.
Some photos take on a timeless quality to them, especially when they are in black and white. Such is the case with the photo shown here of the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, MA. This picture, which was taken in April of 2007, displays a view that almost has a frontier feel to it, even though this spot is less than an hour west of Boston. I took this on a day that featured some rather striking cloud formations, which added to the moodiness of the shot.
You don't have to travel very far out of Boston to find some truly unspoiled areas. One example is World's End in Hingham, which is only about 10 miles south of the city as the crow flies, but has the look and feel of a coastal spot about as far away from civilization as you can get. World's End is a coastal conservation area made up of hills, fields, and woodlands, and was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also helped the Emerald Necklace in Boston and Central Park in New York come into being. The photo shown here, which was taken in May of 2006, shows just one of many beautiful tree-lined paths that wind through through the reservation.
Cape Cod is a beautiful place, with long stretches of beach, haunting lighthouses, and sand cliffs above the ocean. Much of the Cape, however, is deeply wooded, with some very old pine, cedar, and maple forests in some areas. The photo shown here, which was taken in August of 2006, shows a part of Eastham (on the Outer Cape) that is near a sandy ocean beach yet feels almost like a dense rainforest. There are a number of deeply wooded boardwalks trails on the Outer Cape, with this one in the Red Maple Swamp near Fort Hill being one of the most scenic. 
Sometimes the most interesting scenes can be found in the most unlikely of spots. This photo, which was taken in January 2009 while on a snowshoe hike at the AMC Ponkapoag Camp south of Boston, shows a section of Randolph that many people don't know about. Randolph is a community south of Boston that is mostly residential and commercial, and is probably not seen as a place of scenic beauty. But some of the Boston area's most remote--and scenic--areas can be found in the Randolph section of the Blue Hills, as can be seen here. 
This photo, which was taken in June of 2007, shows what kind of scenery can be found in the beautiful Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Just an hour and a half from the Boston area, Sunderland is a small town surrounded by hills and mountains and looks more like it might be in Vermont rather than Massachusetts. I took this photo from the top of windswept Mount Sugarloaf, which rises sharply from the Connecticut River and the western edge of town. 
Lexington, MA, is an interesting place; it is a town that attracts tourists from all over the world for its historic significance, but it also happens to be a bedroom community of Boston. It also happens to have one of the most beautiful village greens in all of New England, as this picture, which was taken in the winter of 2006, shows.
Cape Cod is a very scenic place in spots, but not all of the scenery is along the coast. The inland sections of the Cape (including areas around the Cape Cod Rail Trail) have a beauty all their own. This photo, which was taken on a late-fall day from the rail trail in Harwich, shows some of the beauty of the mostly unspoiled interior of the Cape. It shows Long Pond at sunset, with the moon high up in the sky and just starting to get bright. 
There are a number of areas just west of Boston that tend to be popular with peepers, as many of the towns in this region are unspoiled and serene. Lincoln is a fine example of this, as the photo shown here (which was taken in the late 1980s) demonstrates. This shot was taken on an old lane only a few hundred yards from the center of Lincoln, just 1 mile from busy Route 2 and less than 15 miles from Boston.
This photo was taken in August, 2005, at the tip of Hull, Massachusetts (also known as "Hull Gut"). Hull is surrounded by water, affording tremendous views in almost every direction, but as you approach the tip of the peninsula where Hull Gut is, the views get especially dramatic. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the Boston skyline in the background.