---
title: "A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden"
tags: digital-garden zettelkasten
date: 2021-01-29 14:20:50
---

# A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

[Source](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history)

> They're collections of evolving ideas that aren't strictly organized 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.

It's a different way of thinking about our online behavior around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explore-able space.

## Features

1. **Topography over Timelines**: Organized by contextual relationships, bi-directional links.
2. **Continuous Growth**: Continuously evolving work in progress.
3. **Learning in Public & Imperfection**: Blogging is performative. Digital gardening is less performative than a blog, but more intentional and thoughtful than our Twitter feed. It wants to build personal knowledge over time.
![https://res.cloudinary.com/dg3gyk0gu/image/upload/c_scale,w_1600/v1593765637/maggieappleton.com/notes/garden-history/digital-garden.png]
4. **Playful, Personal, and Experimental**: Even the tools are evolving and experimental.
5. **Inter-cropping & Content Diversity**: All varieties of mediums grow in the garden - videos, podcasts, short notes, long essays, academic papers, sketches.
6. **Independent Ownership**: No one can take your garden away. If you give it a bit of forethought – storing notes in flat markdown files – you can built it in a way that easily transfers as platforms and technologies inevitably change.

Original Source - [Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckv_CjyKyZY&feature=emb_logo), [Article](https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/)

- https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/10/of-gardens-and-wikis/
- https://www.swyx.io/digital-garden-tos/


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### Tags
#digital-garden #zettelkasten