---
date: '2024-02-09'
description: personal hypertext system where notes and ideas grow organically over time, contrasting the garden metaphor with the stream in knowledge cultivation.
id: Digital garden
modified: 2026-05-09 17:51:53 GMT-04:00
tags:
  - seed
  - pattern
title: Digital garden
created: '2024-02-09'
published: '2024-02-09'
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slug: thoughts/Digital-garden
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/Digital-garden.md
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---
A collection of notes, thoughts, and ideas that are cultivated and grown over time. It’s a place where you can plant seeds, grow them, and let them bloom. It’s a place where you can let your thoughts grow organically, and where you can let your ideas flourish.

In a sense, it is a form of [[thoughts/Hypertext|hypertext]], a personalized Xanadu system. Wikipedia is also considered as society’s digital garden

Joel Hooks puts this better than I can ever do:

> A garden is usually a place where things grow.
>
> Gardens can be very personal and full of whimsy or a garden can be a source of food and substance.
>
> We gather and work together in community gardens to share the labor as well as the rewards of a collective effort.
>
> It’s a comparison that you can take very far. From “planting seeds” and “pulling weeds” to tending multiple gardens that each serve an individual need or desired outcome.
>
> Like with real gardens, our digital gardens are a constant ebb and flow towards [[thoughts/Entropy|entropy]].

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="fr" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nerding hard on digital gardens, personal wikis, and experimental knowledge systems with @_jonesian today.<br><br>We have an epic collection going, check these out...<br><br>1. <a href="https://x.com/tomcritchlow?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tomcritchlow</a>&#39;s Wikifolders: <a href="https://t.co/QnXw0vzbMG">https://t.co/QnXw0vzbMG</a> <a href="https://t.co/9ri6g9hD93">pic.twitter.com/9ri6g9hD93</a></p>&mdash; Maggie Appleton (@Mappletons) <a href="https://x.com/Mappletons/status/1250532315459194880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">15 avril 2020</a></blockquote>



See also: [post](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history) and [introduction](https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden), and <https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/17/building-digital-garden/>

## The garden and the stream

[source](https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/)

> I don’t want people to get hung up on the technology angle. I think sometimes people hear “Federated Thingamabob” and just sort of tune out thinking “Oh, he’s talking about a feature of Federated Thingamabob.” But I’m not. I’m really not. I’m talking about a different way to think your online activity, no matter what tool you use. And relevant to this conference, I’m talking about a different way of collaborating as well.