digital gardens

The phrase “digital garden” refers to a place on the internet, typically a personal website, but even more to an ethos. Gardens are places where seeds are planted and grow, tended by a caretaker, with plants in various states of maturity, sometimes hybridized, and arranged for meandering. Likewise, digital gardens often include ideas in various states of ongoing development (like permanent notes). Unlike blogs, they eschew chronological order for rich interlinking: like gardens they have no beginning or end; you can meander as curiosity carries you. Digital gardens have much in common with wikis, though more personal than collaborative.

I also like Maggie Appleton’s definition in A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden:

A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete - notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.

See Also

• The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral distinguishing digital gardens from the chronological “streams” typical of current social media

Example Gardens

• https://www.mentalnodes.com/
• https://salman.io/notes
• https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
• https://maggieappleton.com/garden (includes phenomenal illustrations!)
• https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden

Directories

• Raymond D Sims’ categorized list
• Maggie Appleton’s directory of examples, tools, and theory