There are a number of ways to define a digital garden, but Maggie Appleton has [the best piece I've seen on it](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history), so perhaps it's best to let her explain: >They're not following the conventions of the "_personal blog_," as we've come to know it. Rather than presenting a set of polished articles, displayed in reverse chronological order, these sites act more like free form, work-in-progress wikis. >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. ## Gardens and Streams Mike Caulfield wrote an influential essay, titled [The Garden and the Stream: a Technopastoral](https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/), which laid out the term digital garden in contrast to the stream (the firehose of fleeting information we consume, mostly on social media): >The _garden_ is our counterbalance. **Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time.** Everything is arranged and connected in ways that allow you to explore. Think about the way Wikipedia works when you're hopping from [Bolshevism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevism) to [Celestial Mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_mechanics) to [Dunbar's Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number). It's hyperlinking at it's best. You get to actively choose which curiosity trail to follow, rather than defaulting to the algorithmically-filtered ephemeral stream. **The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.** If you'd rather watch than read, here's [the keynote he gave laying out the idea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckv_CjyKyZY). ## Notes are not new While the digital garden idea is focused on web-based note systems, the deeper idea of keeping track of ideas in notes dates back much further, of course. [Commonplace books](https://ryanholiday.net/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/) have long been used by intellectual greats, as have personal notetaking systems. The [Zettelkasten technique](https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/) seemed to be a step up in this system, adding a bit of organizational improvement. ## PKM: my version of a digital garden My version of a digital garden borrows a bit from all of these concepts, but still falls into the broader concept of **Personal Knowledge Management**. I have some public notes—my Ideas Notebook you're currently reading—that fit well within the "share networked thinking in public" ethos that Maggie and Mike focus on. I also have several other "gardens," that aren't public and aren't about publishing at all. One I see as my PKM for ideas, life advice, book notes, and so forth. Another is reserved specifically for "[[Digital gardening for travel]]," while yet another is focused solely on personal memories that I want to keep forever. I use [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md) for my digital gardens (and Obsidian's Publish service for my public one). If you're interested in getting started, here's [a post about three nontechnical options](https://maggieappleton.com/nontechnical-gardening) (Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research).