What are digital gardens?
I really enjoy Jacky Zhao’s description of digital gardens:
A digital garden… is a network of interconnected ideas and thoughts, clustered by how they are associated with each other.
A collection of notes and ideas, mainly organized by their connections to each other. Similar to how a wiki works, you let the ideas bleed into one another, and you can be taken on an exploratory adventure of reading, starting in one place and winding up in a completely unexpected other.
Personally, I really love this format as it keeps notes evergreen, and you can constantly update your ideas. I think it also adds a little bit of chaos into the mix and that keeps things interesting and probably is helpful for creativity.
I’ve been taking notes through Obsidian for years, mostly for work. But as I explore writing and have been consuming a lot more literature lately, I’ve found that I really want to have a place to express my ideas and workshop/practice my writing without the pressure or polish of a blog. Digital gardens, like irl gardens, are what you put into it. They’re both beautiful and works in in progress. At times, very messy, as you dig up old plants and replace them with new ones, add fertilizer, dig in and get your hands dirty. And I like that idea. A space to create unfettered by expectation, a place to write down crazy, outlandish, unpolished ideas freely. So this is my digital garden, its for me, but I also find value in publishing work online.