A digital garden is a different way of thinking about publishing online. Unlike a traditional blog with polished, finished posts, a garden is a collection of evolving ideas at various stages of development. It's a place that makes it possible to make connections between all the things that you are consuming or thinking about. There might not be an index or navigational aids, you'll need to follow a link to some starting point and click through in order to see more. This makes it feel as if you can focus down on some rabbit holes.
I think a lot of us have gotten really good at writing things down: taking notes, screenshotting interesting digital media, adding things to our bookmarks. The more important question is what to do with it all. Components are ultimately the building blocks of a story, project, or idea, but accumulation means nothing without connection.
I am aiming to connect more between all the different pieces I am thinking about by being open about the concept of letting ideas grow, and not having a fully-fleshed article ready. But also by trying to find links between my interests. In this digital garden, I am using internal links, or wiki links as they are called, to link to other notes within this garden. At the moment, these get an orange color. For example: check out my garden note about the indie web
In practice
There are several platforms and tools that can be used to create a digital garden, such as Obsidian, Roam or Notion. Some people publish their gardens on their personal website. Other people create an analog version by using physical notebooks and referencing page numbers.
However, I think it is very important to keep the process simple, natural and fun. It doesn't matter what tool you use. Focus on adding structure and follow your interests.
Examples
The digital garden The Quantum Well (about mathematics and physics) and the digital garden Chromatically (from a woman doing her nursing degree) are great examples of how diverse digital gardens can be. Andy Matuschak notes' are also filled with interesting research.
Principles of digital gardening
These are personal! You can have different principles.
- Gardens are organized around contextual relationships and associative links, usually via bidirectional links. Forcing ourselves to add links between notes, makes us think about how concepts are related to each other. It is also a natural way of coming back to notes and reviewing them. Associations over hierarchy for an organic structure. We are used to a time-based structure or a hierarchal structure such as folders and categories, but it's better to let networks of related ideas gradually emerge, unlabeled.
- Continuous growth by not focusing on only new content, but on where your current interests flow. It's makes it more natural to go back to things you have written before. Over time, big things grow. It also attacks perfectionism by not having to create one perfect essay at once. I really like the idea of building in public, or working with the garage door open.
- Notes are concept-oriented in the sense that they are not focussing on one book, event, etc. By focussing on concepts, you can later discover connections and find where new notes fit in your garden.
Reference
- A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton, who is often referred to when talking about digital gardens
- YT video: creating a digital garden to end my doomscrolling by Anna Howard. A very popular video that got me to follow her (video) podcasts.
- Building a digital garden: How I built myself a simple wiki by Tom Critchlow.
- Why not publish all your notes online? by Richard Griffiths