If you want a bush, rosemary is a pretty hearty bush-like herb that you might consider. It's more like a bush than a ground cover, though, and I don't really know how it is in MA. I've seen a few pretty big rosemary plants in NC but some have been lost to mites in the past year or two. In our yard, English ivy has been taking over everything and I am having trouble keeping ahead of it taking over bedding areas and killing our evergreen trees.