Collection property not working

[Hessam]

Hello,
I am designing a .net custom control in VS.net 7.1 and my control exposes an
array of strings which are supposed to be the items to show. To do this have
declared a private string[ ] variable and a public property which returns
it.
string[] options = new string[1];

public string[] Options

{

get

{

return options;

}

set

{

options = value;

}

}

It works fine in the disigner and I can add items to the list using the
VS.net string collection editor and see the changes in real-time. But when I
run the App, I recieve this error:

Cannot create an object of type 'System.String[]' from its string
representation 'String[] Array' for the 'Options' property.

Even with other types of collections (objects, etc.), I receive this error.
What should I do.