what is it?

A digital garden is a space to learn in public without the pressure of writing polished pieces like one would for a personal blog. It is a collection of thoughts, highlights, clippings, annotations, summaries, notes, and the like that is tended to and evolves over time.

map of garden

Note

Categorization adopted from The Threshold

  • seed: thoughts barely started
  • sapling: substantial content with much work to be done—coherence and patterns are just emerging
  • tree: grown-up, coherent pieces of thought, essay, or expression that should not change much except for editorial enhancements
  • withered: outdated views, whether totally or partially
  • stone: notes exported or extracted from other mediums where growth is irrelevant (e.g. clippings, highlights, and reading notes)
  • signpost: allow for ease of navigation
  • chest: how-to’s and tools

where to go next

  • jennypng: my friend who inspired me to make my garden public
  • Hermitage: inspiration for my note categorizations; looking at this garden made the purpose of digital gardening click for me
  • Andy’s working notes: great explanations of the principles of note-taking
  • Derek Sivers: started the /now page, which I’ve adopted for my home page

references & further reading