What I Discovered About Growing Ideas #

I used to think every piece of writing needed to be perfect before hitting publish. Complete thoughts, polished prose, definitive conclusions. Then I discovered digital gardens, and everything changed.

The main thing holding many of us back from publishing more frequently is perfectionism—the fear of sharing incomplete thoughts or being judged for work-in-progress ideas. Digital gardens offer a different approach.

“A collection of imperfect notes, essays, and ideas growing slowly over time.” — Maggie Appleton

A digital garden is a personal, evolving collection of notes, ideas, and resources published online. But that dry definition misses the magic. Think of it less like a magazine article and more like tending an actual garden—you plant seeds of ideas, nurture them over time, watch unexpected connections bloom between seemingly unrelated thoughts, and accept that some plants will always be growing while others lie dormant, waiting for the right season.

Unlike traditional blogs where posts are published once and archived into chronological history, digital gardens prioritize growth, interconnection, and discoverability over perfection. They’re living knowledge bases that make your learning visible—including the messy, uncertain, still-figuring-it-out parts.

Where This Idea Came From #

The term “digital garden” gained momentum through the work of Maggie Appleton and a community of knowledge workers in the early 2020s, though the roots go deeper—back to personal wikis, commonplace books, and Zettelkasten systems that scholars have used for centuries. What resonated with me wasn’t just the tooling, but the permission to think in public without the pressure of being an authority.

This isn’t about the framework or the publishing platform. It’s about fundamentally rethinking what it means to share knowledge online—shifting from polished articles to public learning that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space.

The philosophy centers on three interconnected principles:

Growth Over Perfection #

Content is always evolving. Incomplete notes aren’t just welcome—they’re expected. That rough draft about Domain-Driven Design you’ve been sitting on? Plant it. You can tend to it later. The goal is progress, not polish.

Interconnection #

Notes are linked together, forming a web of related ideas rather than isolated posts. This mirrors how our minds actually work—thinking isn’t linear, it’s associative. When I write about microservices architecture, my brain naturally connects to bounded contexts, deployment strategies, and even lessons from photography about composition and framing. In a digital garden, those connections become explicit. Every link between notes reveals new patterns from familiar pieces.

Evergreen Content #

Articles are updated and refined over time rather than being static snapshots frozen at publication. Last year’s note on React hooks gets enhanced with this year’s insights. Ideas compound. This inverts the typical blogging model—instead of newest = most valuable, it’s most refined = most valuable. Time becomes an ally rather than an enemy.

The Difference #

Digital gardens are closer to personal wikis or Zettelkasten systems than blogs. They invite exploration rather than passive consumption. Readers don’t just scroll through your latest posts—they follow curiosity through a web of interconnected thoughts.

This shift freed me from “expert syndrome.” I don’t need to wait until I’ve mastered something to share what I’m learning. The garden grows with me.

Chaos as a Feature, Not a Bug #

One of the most counterintuitive aspects of digital gardens is how they embrace disorder as creative fuel. When my notes are too neatly organized into strict hierarchies, serendipitous connections disappear. But when I allow some messiness—when a note about async/await patterns sits adjacent to one about photography composition, and both link to thoughts on temporal design—unexpected insights emerge.

The chaos isn’t random. It’s structured entropy: loose enough to allow surprise, tight enough to remain navigable. Tags, links, and search provide paths through the wilderness. The wilderness itself is where discovery happens. A dash of chaos and entropy helps connect two separate ideas you normally wouldn’t have associated with each other.

This resonates with how actual gardens work. You can’t control exactly how plants grow, where pollinators carry seeds, or which relationships develop between species. You create conditions for growth, then observe what emerges. Digital gardens work the same way.

What Makes a Garden Flourish #

Through building my own digital garden, I’ve found these patterns keep showing up:

Atomic Notes Each note explores a single idea or concept.

Progressive Summarization Information flows from general context to specific details.

Internal Linking This is where the magic happens. Every time I create a connection between notes, I’m building context.

Meaningful Metadata Tags and categories aren’t just for search engines—they’re discovery pathways. When I tag something as #learning-in-public or #architecture-patterns, I’m creating breadcrumbs for future me (and future readers).

Visible Evolution Rather than hiding the revision history, digital gardens often make it visible. “Updated January 2025 with new insights from the EchoJournal project.” This transparency shows that knowledge is a process, not a destination.

How I Started #

I didn’t wake up one day with a fully-formed digital garden. It started small and grew organically:

1. Choose Tools That Fit Your Thinking I use Hugo because I love working with Markdown and version control. Others prefer Obsidian Publish for its graph view, or Notion for its databases. The tool matters less than whether it gets out of your way when ideas strike.

2. Plant Seeds, Not Trees Don’t wait for comprehensive articles. Capture ideas as atomic notes, even if they’re just a paragraph and three links. My note on “Service Mesh Patterns” started as five bullet points. Two years later, it’s grown into a reference I actually use.

3. Make Connections Explicit Every time you write something, ask: “What does this remind me of? What have I already written that connects here?” Then link them. Those connections are the neural pathways of your digital garden.

4. Tend Regularly, Not Perfectly I don’t update every note constantly. But when I’m working on a project and discover new insights, I revisit related notes and add context. The garden grows through attention, not obligation.

5. Share What’s Growing Publishing incomplete thoughts feels vulnerable. Do it anyway. The best conversations I’ve had came from notes marked “work in progress.” People engage differently when they can see you thinking.

What This Means for Me #

Building this digital garden has changed how I learn. Instead of consuming information passively, I think with my fingers—writing notes that connect to other notes, discovering patterns I didn’t see before, building a personal knowledge base that compounds over time.

It’s also changed how I share. I used to agonize over blog posts for weeks, trying to make them authoritative and complete. Now I plant rough notes and tend them over time. Some grow into substantial pieces. Others stay small. Both outcomes feel generative rather than failed.

Most importantly, it’s made learning visible—not just the polished conclusions, but the questions, the connections, the evolution. That’s what a digital garden is really about: thinking in public, growing in the open, connecting ideas across time.

Your garden will look different from mine. That’s the point.

Further Exploration #

Inspirational Digital Gardens #

If you want to see different approaches to digital gardening in practice, these gardens have shaped my thinking:

• Maggie Appleton’s Garden - Beautifully illustrated, comprehensive history of digital gardens with visual thinking and progressive disclosure
• Jacky Zhao’s Garden - Emphasizes chaos and entropy as creative features, with strong interconnected notes structure
• Ruksi’s Notes - A practical example of publishing a subset of private notes, with transparent discussion of challenges
• Tom Critchlow’s Digital Garden - Blends consulting insights with personal knowledge, showing how gardens can serve professional contexts
• Mike Caufield’s Work - Pioneering thoughts on how digital gardens change our relationship with online information
• Best-of-digital-gardens - A ranked list of awesome digital gardens. Updated weekly.

Each garden has different emphases—some lean more toward visual thinking, others toward dense interconnections, others toward clear hierarchies. There’s no one right way to grow.