No shrinking violet.

ANDREW VOGEL WANTS TO MAKE ONE THING CLEAR: "I'M NOT A flower person." Vogel's tone is pejorative, his denial sounding almost Nixon-esque. "This is a business, these are flowers," he adds. "That's how I look at it. I don't even give my wife anything but tulips, and then it's only if I have any left over from the day."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Vogel is the sole proprietor and only full-time employee of Plant-a-Mime, a floral design company that provides decorative-but-hardy arrangements for a group of French and Mediterranean restaurants in New York, including Marseilles, French Roast, L'Express, Le Monde and Nice Matin. He also services some corporate clients, like a series of midtown monoliths that house the National Hockey League, the Bank of Tokyo and Avon. When he's not picking up supplies in Manhattan's wholesale flower district or installing arrangements in his clients' dining rooms, he works out of his home in Oceanside, NY.

"I'm in business twenty-six years without a store," he says. "I don't need a store to survive, and without that overhead, I can do better and more for the client." Among Vogel's first clients was Morgan Stanley, "way back in 1978, before they had matching furniture." He was fresh out of college, and was volunteering at a dental clinic and working an assortment of odd jobs, one of which was watering Morgan Stanley's plants. A secretary offered to fire the florist and hire Vogel if he could do a better job. After a few weeks of buying arrangements from a local shop and selling them to the fledgling investment firm at a thirty-three percent markup, the would-be dentist invested in some equipment, learned the basics of arranging, and never looked back.

"I'd like to retire," he quips, "but I have two kids who like to go to sleepaway camp, and take vacations, and wear Juicy Couture."

Vogel has agreed to meet me in Manhattan's flower market district, an area surrounding West 28th Street that houses about seventy businesses selling flowers and related goods and services, and that has lately succumbed to encroaching real estate development and rising rents in the area. For two years, The Flower Market Association of New York City has been investigating the flourishing Meatpacking District, about 15 blocks south, as a possible new home for the market's vendors. The plan, called "Meat Market Blooms", is currently under review by state and city bureaucracies, but if all goes well, the market could head south as soon as Fall 2005. In the meantime, it's business as usual in this particularly fragrant area of the city.

It's a Thursday, one of Vogel's busiest days, in which he'll spend an hour or so picking up pre-ordered flowers and other 'green material', and another 12 to 14 driving from dining room to dining room, installing 28 more or less identical arrangements. He's running late, as a parade down Fifth Avenue has put traffic in the area at a virtual standstill. I wait outside a storefront belonging to Harry Vlacho, a flower wholesaler who supplies Vogel with the bulk of his product, and who allows Vogel to park his van inside his garage-like shop. "We have a mutual agreement," he'll later say, not elaborating further. As I wait, I watch a remarkable cross-section of New Yorkers dart in and out of the wholesale electronics, plant and apparel shops that line the street. Vogel has told me that, officially, the wholesalers are not open to the general public, but I've also heard that customers with cash generally do not have a problem getting what they need. I inadvertently test this theory when, fearing that my tape recorder might fail in the course of the interview, I dart down the street to a toy wholesaler and score a box of forty double A batteries for a mere $7.

It's 11 am, the end of the day for most flower vendors, whose first customers come to pick up flowers as early as 5 am. Vogel likes to come later in the morning, to avoid rush hour traffic into Manhattan and, I suspect, to avoid the "flower people." The flower market has given rise to a lively social scene, at least for the early rising crowd.

At 11:30 am, a shiny blue van pulls up and idles in front of Vlacho's. The mechanized garage door begins to creak open, and one of Vlacho's employees runs out into the street, holding up traffic while the van's driver makes a three-point turn and backs into the open storefront. A tall, slim man in his early 50's, dressed in neatly pressed jeans and a crisp plaid shirt, emerges from the driver's seat. He's smiling, and he starts talking immediately.

"You see what I have to deal with? You think it's easy?" Not waiting for a response, he steps aside to quietly settle some business with Vlacho, an elderly gentleman whose slow movements stand in sharp contrast to the constant, frenetic activity of the three employees moving back and forth across the shop. I run to catch up with the man I assume is Andrew Vogel as he heads out of Vlacho's store, down the block to another wholesaler that specializes in branches and greenery. Vogel quickly introduces himself and explains that we're going to pick up his orders, which include five bales of curly willow branches. They'll be used as a background element in all the arrangements he'll make today. Almost immediately, there's trouble--someone has sold three of the five bales that were to be set aside for Vogel.

"They sold it. That's my corner there," he says, pointing at the place where only two bales of branches, wrapped in brown paper, lean against the wall.

"Actually, you have two corners," says an employee, pushing a wide broom.

"OK, so I have two. There's usually a guarantee if I place an order in advance." He turns to the employee. "But we're not going to make mistakes like this anymore this year, right? Or else I'm not getting you guys lunch, that's it." He doesn't sound serious, and the young man just smiles and returns to his sweeping. For a customer missing sixty percent of his product, Vogel is remarkably calm. It's hard to imagine a chef taking such a major shorting from a trusted purveyor in stride.

"There's so many things that can go wrong," explains Vogel. "The airline can drop it, the grower can forget to send it, the Holland auction might not have it. I've learned not to yell. So the branches were sent down the block--it happens. There's no point in screaming. You look like a fool and no one wants to do business with you."

We're back out on the street, charging down to the next storefront. "So now we have to improvise," says Vogel, squinting at a yellow legal pad whose pages are filled with inscrutable shorthand and rough drawings of arrangements. We walk into a store and Vogel looks around, frowning.

"You see here, there's a lot of short-lived, short-stemmed merchandise," he says, pointing at thousands of brightly-colored blossoms, packed into wrapped bunches and stacked horizontally on metro shelving. "It's great if a restaurant is having a party or a special event, but it'll only last a few days. There are some great colors now, but you won't get the longevity. Like these calla lillies," he says, fingering the gorgeous curve of a white flower. "These are nice, but they don't last long, and they're two dollars a stem. At that price point, you don't get enough volume. For restaurants, I buy things that last a week. I do what I call 'hardcore flowers', not the frilly stuff."

We move on to a row of Gerber daisies in varying shades of red and pink. "Three days per stem, max," says Vogel, and, when he catches me gazing at a lovely heart-shaped flower, "The antherium actually lasts a week, two weeks, but it's a tropical flower. I don't mix tropical and floral, because I don't go that way," he notes. His tone suggests that "going that way" would be akin to dousing a lobe of grade-A foie gras with ketchup. We leave empty-handed and head further down the block.

In each store, a radio blares loud Spanish music, the telephone rings incessantly and the temperature seems to hover about 10 degrees above freezing. Young men sweep piles of discarded petals, stems and leaves into gigantic metal dustpans, while others move stacks of boxes back and forth on wide trolleys. I try to stay out of the way, but as in most New York businesses, real estate is at a premium. Vogel disappears into an office and emerges a minute later, looking slightly peeved. It's happened again--he's ordered four boxes of Bells of Ireland, a lanky green plant that looks like a monochromatic stalk of snapdragons, and no one can find them.

"I'm a professional, I've got to deal with it. One component of the order is not here, I've gotta deal with it." Or not--after a few minutes of semi-frantic searching, Vogel's order turns up on a trolley bound for another customer. He cuts the plastic tape that binds the boxes shut and inspects each stem like a chef checking in his produce. Satisfied, we're off down the block again.

Although most of Vogel's clients are restaurants, he expresses some surprising ambivalence about working with them. "As a general statement, restaurants are slow payers," he says. "They pay their bills depending on what their cash flow is like. Some places are run professionally and they pay their bills on time. This is true of all my current clients. Others, the owners take all the money and live their lifestyle, and when the places close I get stuck with the bill. I've had my share of restaurants that I've had to sue."

We walk into the next store on the block. Vogel has not made an order in advance. He picks and chooses from the merchandise that remains after the busy morning hours, smiles at the clerk and jokes, "Hey man, you're never here on Saturdays anymore. You wanna have a life? How dare you!?"

"In this business, like being a chef, you have to do a lot of work to make a lot of money," he says as we exit. "You cannot screw each customer to make the money. It doesn't work like that," he adds. We head back to Harry Vlacho's, where we find Vogel's helper Neil waiting for him by the van. "He goes about ten minutes ahead of me, trimming, getting vases ready, taking down last week's stuff," Vogel explains. "That's when we know whether or not the restaurant staff is watering, like they say they will. My favorite thing is to take the empty vase and turn it over on a manager's lap. 'Look, no water!'"

Vogel advises his clients to keep the water in the vases free from bacteria, which will clog a plant's stem and prematurely end its life, by adding a 'gulp' of Clorox to each container. "You pour for as long as it takes to say 'gulp', and you're good," he says. He also instructs clients to move arrangements into the walk-in when the restaurant is not in service.

"Heat is the biggest nemesis of nice looking flowers," he explains. "Cold is OK--45 to 50 degrees is great for most flowers, except lilies, which tend to open over 40 degrees. They do better at 38 to 40."

By now he's packed the last of the boxes in his van and is visibly anxious to get on the road. "This is a tough business," he says as he climbs into the passenger seat. One of Vlacho's employees activates the garage door as Vogel continues talking. "I don't know how a person could start today and be successful. I'm a real anomaly in this business. I'm a straight man, I'm married with two kids. I'm the Al Bundy of the flower world." He shuts his door and pulls out onto the street, 28 arrangements between him and the end of a long day.