A Digital Garden is a type of personal website that’s organised more like a collection of evolving notes than a traditional blog. Instead of publishing finished articles in chronological order, you publish ideas, drafts, and references that grow and change over time—much like plants in a garden.
The key idea is ongoing cultivation. You might start with a short note or half-formed thought, then expand or revise it later as you learn more. Older content isn’t buried or replaced; it’s refined. Readers can browse through your thinking process rather than just the final product.
Digital gardens are usually:
- Non-linear: Content is linked by topic, not by date. Navigation often relies on tags, backlinks, or graph views rather than menus.
- Open-ended: Pages are updated and re-edited over time. They’re “evergreen” rather than tied to a publication moment.
- Personal: They reflect your interests, reading, and reasoning, often blending technical notes, essays, and references.
- Exploratory: They encourage discovery and serendipity—visitors can follow connections between related notes rather than a fixed path.
The concept sits somewhere between a blog, a wiki, and a notebook. Many people build digital gardens using tools like Obsidian, Quartz, or 11ty, publishing Markdown files that mirror their personal note collections. The appeal is that you can think in public, share unfinished ideas, and let your body of work evolve naturally over time.
Links
- [[2025-W16]]