I [first heard about this concept](https://morganharpernichols.com/digitalgardens) from Morgan Harper Nichols, > “[Digital gardens] are online spaces where you can collect or share information…an organically grown collection of ideas, resources, and thoughts. It’s a place that you can create online that encourages continuous learning, exploration, and growth, much like tending to a physical garden. It’s a living ecosystem of interconnected insights where the ideas and concepts can bloom, cross-pollinate, or sometimes wither away. Unlike a static blog post or article that presents a finished thought, a digital garden's content is often in a constant state of growth and environment.” I was immediately intrigued. This integrates nicely with my own ideas about [creative ecosystems](https://publish.obsidian.md/sarahshotts/The+Compost+Heap/Wildwood/Creative+Ecosystem) and creative compost. Here are some quotes & notes I’ve collected. --- ### [A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history) by [[Maggie Appleton]] The following quotes are all from Appleton. My reflections are interspersed. > “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.” As someone who struggles with perfectionism and can get caught up in finding the right container a wild digital garden sounds like a particularly fertile project for me. > “Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time… You get to actively choose which curiosity trail to follow, rather than defaulting to the algorithmically-filtered ephemeral stream. The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.” This metaphorical contrast of a constantly flowing stream (like social media) versus following your own curiosity down various rabbit holes reminds me of my early days of the internet and an experience I’d like to get back to. I read this post in segments across multiple days. When I realized I wanted to reframe my artist’s log project as a digital garden (or compost heap) it was clear to me that my newsletter was more of a campfire… a space for connection. Then I continued reading to find this, > “While gardens present the ideas of an individual, campfires are conversational spaces to exchange ideas that aren't yet fully formed.” Love it when a metaphor comes together. And just when I was wondering if maybe it wasn’t all a bit frivolous and I was being distracted from the real work Appleton says, > “Naming is a political act as much as a poetic one.” --- ### Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet A growing number of people are creating individualized, creative sites that eschew the one-size-fits-all look and feel of social media By [Tanya Basu](https://www.technologyreview.com/author/tanya-basu/) MIT Technology Review, September 3, 2020 > These creative reimaginings of blogs have quietly taken nerdier corners of the internet by storm. A growing movement of people are tooling with back-end code to create sites that are more collage-like and artsy, in the vein of Myspace and Tumblr—less predictable and formatted than Facebook and Twitter. Digital gardens explore a wide variety of topics and are frequently adjusted and changed to show growth and learning, particularly among people with niche interests. Through them, people are creating an internet that is less about connections and feedback, and more about quiet spaces they can call their own. > “With blogging, you’re talking to a large audience,” (Tom Critchlow) says. “With digital gardening, you’re talking to yourself. You focus on what you want to cultivate over time.” > The movement might be gaining steam now, but its roots date back to 1998, when Mark Bernstein introduced the idea of the “[hypertext garden](http://www.eastgate.com/garden/Enter.html),” arguing for spaces on the internet that let a person wade into the unknown. “Gardens … lie between farmland and wilderness,” he [wrote](http://www.eastgate.com/garden/Gardens.html). “The garden is farmland that delights the senses, designed for delight rather than commodity.” > “Everyone does their own weird thing.” Maggie Appleton The author of this post ends by wondering if it will hit critical mass - like that is something to aim for. I don’t think so and I hope not. When something becomes mainstream it is co-opted by capitalism and neurotypical social norms. This is exactly what happened to blogging when it went from something nerds did for love and passion to a revenue stream. --- > The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come. > Better still: public note-taking is powerfully _mnemonic_. The things I've taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution. [Cory Dotorow on Blogging](https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/) --- ###### Examples [Digital Garden Resources & Directory](https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners) [Mister Chad’s Mind Garden](https://mister-chad.com/mind+gardens/!+mind+garden) [Salman Notes](https://salman.io/notes/) --- ###### 🐝 Cross Pollination [[Cozy Web]] [[The Internet]] [[Garden of Your Mind]] --- ###### 🌱 Gardener’s Notes Added: April 8, 2024 Tended: April 9, 2024 --- ###### 🍄 Tags #morgan-harper-nichols #maggie-appleton #internet-culture #early-internet #tanya-basu #tom-critchlow #mark-bernstein