Assembly Not Required

This season the only way to get certain amaryllis varieties was to buy them pre-potted for holiday sales. It seems increasingly common to find that some importers are the exclusive purveyors of certain new hybrids. It should come as no surprise that they might also be sold as part of a value added package to get those keen collectors to pony up the big bucks even when we’d rather buy a cheaper bare bulb and pot them ourselves. It worked.

This season, Breck’s Gifts offered several of the new Park amaryllis varieties in just such a manor. Park has been on a tear, and I swear that every time I look at their website it seems like they’ve added a dozen new cultivars. Many are aimed at garden (landscape) use, but also for potted growing and cutflower production. Ambitious! All are field grown in the Netherlands unlike most other Dutch greenhouse grown amarylli. When sold for planting outdoors, they are often sold as small bulbs in groups of three, and marketed for spring planting. This firm is smart, producing Hippeastrum hybrids for sale fall, winter and spring.

Let’s take a look at four of these offerings. I will start by noting how well packaged these were. A big box with four individual boxes inside. Very little soil medium was disturbed, as each pot had specifically shaped cardboard supports, and excels over the bulb nose for protection.

We aren’t going to unpot each bulb to check on the circumference of each, but E estimates they are in the 24/26 cm range. We will have to mange these so that they don’t drown, though. Our new single-flowered subjects are ‘Mojito’, Rising Star’, and ‘Just Smile’ and our lone double is ‘Wild Dance’. The price paid here wasn’t exactly cheap, but that’s what exclusivity brings…pricing power! E had to pay the exact same price ($39.99) for a single dry bulb of ‘Coral Flame’ this year, which hurt. But that much larger bulb was found at only one place, a local full service nursery. We had to do what we had to do. Anything for our readership!

The soil media provided looks quite good, mostly organic with a little perlite thrown in for aeration. Unlike two of our box kits this year, sending these to Aunt Betsy as a holiday gift would not be a risk in terms of sprouting out prematurely. Score one for Northern Hemisphere growers. The inclusion of a paper card with an image of each variety is greatly appreciated, as it would be by anyone receiving one of these as a gift. We like pretty pictures here 😉

While our ‘Rising Star’ did have a funny thing happen on its way to the forum, you can see above that our first pre-potted variety to bloom is a bright and beautiful sight. Since we were growing this and the other three without the included drainless cachepot, it made for a very lightweight situation. While setting up for our photo shoot, the pot toppled when accidentally nudged. It fell, resulting in a serious crack in the scape a few inches below the flower. Luckily the flower wasn’t damaged, but we did have to tilt the pot just so in order to prevent it from snapping at the fracture. Right after taking a few photos, the scape was cut. A thin bamboo stake was gently shoved up into the hollow scape, then placed in a vase for continued opening. All good!

The scape itself was 56 cm tall ( a bit under 2 feet), so not as short as the Park Amaryllis website seems to suggest in stating that ‘Rising Star’ has short stems. It’s about average in height for a large flowered amaryllis. We see four 19 cm (7.48 inch) flowers of very broad, rounded form and saturated true orange color. It’s a beauty in our eyes! Though the provided colorful card shows two scapes and some foliage, we don’t see any foliage. The scape came from top dead center of the bulb nose, which likely means we won’t see a second scape either. We will let you know if it does. So, what’s going on with the other three?

It looks like we’ll be reporting on ‘Mojito’ any day! It also looks like it will be correctly labeled. Compared to inexpensive box kits that nowadays are often supplied with bulbs already in (bent) scape or even blooming in the box, these seem a better gifting option. But will any of these make more than one scape per bulb? Are they worth the price? Stay tuned!

On January 9, 2026 we had our second Breck’s on full display. ‘Mojito’ is just as pictured, so we are 2 for 2 on correct labeling! The tall (61 cm ) scape bears a generous 6 buds. This is nice because we doubt these kits will make two scapes each. The flowers are silky, with a cream white background. The diffuse light green heart reaches out along the midribs, cooling the entire face of the flower. They have a lovely star shape versus the really rounded form of ‘Rising Star’. This always makes these flowers appear smaller and lighter, though the diameter here is 18 cm (over 7 inches). We are delighted to have this lovely newcomer in our collection!

Late January saw the opening of the last two varieties to bloom in fine form. While they (of course) just began opening the day E was leaving for a one week vacation, they were in remarkably great shape upon return. Take a look!

‘Just Smile’ turns in a great performance on this one (and perhaps only) scape. Its modest height and ample foliage makes for a balanced display, and we have a generous 7 buds here! The flowers are on the small side of large-flowered at 17 cm across, and appear mis-sized as the tepal tips roll back. Rosy and orange shades with white midribs straddle the line between vivid and pastel beautifully.

‘Wild Dance’ lacks foliage, and is quite tall with a 65 cm scape that is tinted violet at the base. Probably the best thing about double amaryllis is their extreme variability. Sometimes that means few, rather misshapen tepals, heavy blooms that may or may not hold upright, and every color that their single brethren show. ‘Wild Dance’ goes in a direction we quite like. In this case, plenty of strappy, frilly, curly and undulating tepals. Well named, ‘Wild Dance’ celebrates its irregularities. Ruddy orange dominates, with white midribs and chestnut red whiskers all blending in a chaotically wonderful fashion. What a way to culminate our group of pre-potted trials! It appears however, that these bulbs lacked in only one way. We would always like to see at minimum, two scapes per bulb. Hold up, what do we see?!

So, with ‘Mojito’ being the only one of the bunch to make two scapes, it would seem to be the best of the lot. But that’s just in terms of productivity. It would have been nice to include larger bulbs with such premium packaging. In general though, Emaryllis was quite happy to get good photos of four new varieties for our viewers. These would have made excellent gifts for the plant person in your life! A good plants person would know that the lack of drainage would be the only hinderance to long term success here, but careful watering might allow for short term success if the surface few centimeters of the media was allowed to dry. Those clear sleeves did lead to a near disaster with ‘Rising Star’ because they offer no counterweight to the tipsy scapes on their own. They do, however, allow the grower to confirm whether root growth is happening or not.

In conclusion, the value proposition for Emaryllis was good here. For many, the expense and lack of two scapes per bulb in three cases would certainly call that into question. These offerings had one factor that made them worthwhile to E, and others those seeking the newest varieties; they were exclusively offered by only one company in the U.S. That alone was a no-brainer for us!