A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

A newly revived philosophy for publishing personal knowledge on the web.

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.

The early web-adopters were caught up in the idea of The Web as a labyrinth-esque community landscape tended by WikiGardeners and WikiGnomes.

The Navigation Problem: The issue of how to give web users just enough guidance to freely explore the web, without forcing them into pre-defined browsing experiences. The eternal struggle to find the right balance of chaos and structure.

Digital Gardening is a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space.