Digital gardens are networks of evolving ideas
A digital garden rejects the blog's tyranny of chronology. Instead of finished posts sorted by date, you cultivate evergreen-notes organized by connection.
The form emerged from hypertext-pioneers but was named and refined by practitioners like maggie-appleton and andy-matuschak.
Key properties:
- Topography over timeline. Navigate by association, not recency.
- Continuous growth. Notes evolve. Nothing is "published" and done.
- Learning in public. Show rough work. Use status markers.
- Personal and idiosyncratic. Your garden, your rules.
Gardens work because linking creates context, and context creates meaning. A note's value compounds with each connection.
See also: knowledge-work-should-accrete, thinking-in-public