It’s a gloomy Pittsburgh day everywhere but in Sol Patch Garden. The small flower farm run by first-generation farmer Collette Walsh explodes with color and buzzes with life, the seasonal blooms bursting with bright yellows, oranges, and pinks against a cloudy sky.
“It’s important to grow things that you love,” Collette said, walking through her rows of annuals, Amaranth — a drooping, impressively boldly-pink-hued flower — blowing with the breeze as she walks. Once a vegetable farmer, Collette found herself loving flowers, which, when she moved to Pittsburgh in 2016, was one of the many things that pushed her to start a garden.
So, using a nickname given to her while working on a large-scale vegetable farm in California, Sol Patch, Collette started growing flowers in her and her grandmother’s backyards, eventually landing on a half-to-three-quarter acre plot of land inside Hilltop Urban Farm. The urban farm allowed her to condense the operation, though she still relies on the two starter gardens for perennials.
“Flowers seemed like an untapped market in Pittsburgh,” she said. “And I felt like flowers were more flexible since I wanted to be in the city and grow in an urban setting; with flowers, I could grow a lot but in a small space.”
Despite some challenges that farming on urban land brings (Collette says she’s dug up everything from giant slabs to stovetops and kids’ shoes in her lot on the Hilltop), she’s managed to cultivate a vibrant, thriving garden of flowers.
She grows a mix of cut flowers based on her likes, aesthetics, and what will grow well in Pittsburgh’s climate. Currently, Sol Patch is blooming with everything seasonal — drooping Amaranth, puff-balls of colorful Gomphrena, flame-like Celosia — as well as some flowers she plans to dry for the winter.
Everything in her garden is kept as low impact as possible. Collette reuses what she can, donates equipment to gorilla gardening groups, and uses low-waste and recyclable materials to wrap her flowers.
And, though it hasn’t always been easy to get consumers to understand and appreciate locally-grown flowers, Colette says it’s changing. “Over the winter, I saw all of these people start growing flowers, and they’re starting to see how great it is and how it can benefit other people,” she said.
Colette, who loves Harvie because of the reach we have to connect with people all over the city, has all kinds of seasonal bouquets in the store this summer. Brighten your home with fresh flowers — add a bouquet to your next delivery!