Digital Garden Guide
Digital gardens represent a new approach to personal websites—less blog, more evolving collection of notes and ideas. For guidance on formatting your digital garden entries, refer to our comprehensive Markdown Boilerplate.
What is a Digital Garden?
A digital garden is a collection of notes, essays, and ideas that aren’t necessarily finished or polished. Unlike blogs organized chronologically, digital gardens organize content by topic and connections.
aa.The term “digital garden” was popularized by Mike Caulfield in his essay “The Garden and the Stream.”For a broader context on knowledge management, see our Personal Knowledge Base guide. The proper formatting of your garden notes is crucial—our Markdown Boilerplate provides all the syntax examples you’ll need.
Principles of Digital Gardening
- Notes evolve over time - Content isn’t static but grows and changes, similar to how we update our Academic Writing practices
- Topological rather than chronological - Organized by connections, not dates
- Learning in public - Sharing your knowledge journey openly, as demonstrated in our Zettelkasten Method
- Imperfection is acceptable - Works-in-progress welcome
For examples of proper formatting in all these contexts, see our Markdown Boilerplate.
Implementing Your Digital Garden
Hugo makes an excellent platform for digital gardens. To properly format your garden notes, use our Markdown Boilerplate for reference. You might also want to check our Hugo Styling Guide for visual customizations.
Connecting Your Notes
For a digital garden to thrive, interlinking is crucial. Reference our Content Organization Guide for best practices. Effective linking requires consistent formatting—see our Markdown Boilerplate for proper syntax.
Digital Gardening vs. Traditional Blogging
| Digital Garden | Traditional Blog |
|---|---|
| Topic-based | Time-based |
| Continuously updated | Published once |
| Network structure | Linear structure |
| Works-in-progress | Finished articles |
Learn how to format beautiful tables like this in our Markdown Boilerplate.
Growing Your Garden
A digital garden requires ongoing cultivation. Set aside time weekly to:
- Plant new ideas
- Weed out outdated content
- Cross-pollinate with connections
- Harvest fully developed concepts
For advanced styling of your digital garden, see our Hugo Styling Guide. And remember, proper Markdown formatting as shown in our Markdown Boilerplate will make your garden not only beautiful but also consistent and professional.