AMY HALSEY: Working

By Linda Baccash

Step into the Milk Pail on Montauk Highway in Water Mill and you pass through the looking glass into Amy's wonderland of amaryllis plants. There, amid the quality produce of her family's farmstand, she sells traditional and specialty amaryllis.

Amy is Amy Halsey, a 26-year-old entrepreneur with a gift for tropical bulbs and unusual annuals and a passion for her family's farm.

"I always wanted to be connected to the farm," she said. "It's a visceral need for me that's like breathing, but I also wanted to do something that was creative and on my own."

Six years ago, after having graduated from college with a degree in horticulture and inspired by an internship spent in Holland in her senior year, Ms. Halsey started Amy's Flowers in a small greenhouse.

"I am intrigued by the unique and attracted to a challenge," she said. "That's why I decided to try amaryllis as a winter business. They are tricky and unpredictable, but have a glorious four-to-six-week show."

Although Ms. Halsey now imports 1,000 Dutch bulbs a season and is expanding her greenhouse space to 8,000 square feet, hers is still a one-woman operation. She handles every aspect of the business herself, from ordering bulbs through selling and gift wrapping.

She says the arrival each October of a shipment of large gnarly amaryllis bulbs is an indescribable thrill. "I don't always get what I've ordered and I never really know how they'll turn out, but it is so miraculous to me to be the agent for nature's transformation. I just encourage the magnificence that already exists."

Ms. Halsey plants each bulb in an individual container and heats them from below with mats. She uses ordinary potting soil and water and rotates them for light as needed. They remain in the greenhouse until some time in November when they are mature enough for sale.

The most difficult aspect of her work is the fact that no two plants are ready to bloom at the same time.

This year, due to a customs glitch, 300 bulbs arrived too late to be ready for the holidays. They will be on sale through the winter at the Milk Pail.

With heady names like Las Vegas, Mount Blanc, Red Lion, and Jewel, each of the plants is a thick single or double stalk, often tinged with deep purple. When sold they are on the verge of exploding into trumpets of color. They are easy to care for once they've come to this point, Ms. Halsey said, and some of her clients have kept them successfully repeat blooming for years.

At the beginning of May, Amy's Flowers will reopen at an enlarged greenhouse on Mecox Road rather than at the Milk Pail. Ms. Halsey, immersed in the cycle of flowering life, is clearly content with her chosen labor.