Recently, I came across the concept of a digital garden. As someone who’s often reading blogs, articles and various other forms of content on the Internet, I’m always interested in new ways to express ideas and thoughts.
So, what is a digital garden? According to Maggie Appleton, a digital garden is a means of organising thoughts and personal notes, as well as a way to share current learning in public. It’s a bit more formalised than simply writing it down on paper or in an app, but less formal and structured than a traditional blogpost or article. It’s an ideal way of quickly sharing thoughts, and also has the benefit of not needing to be fully formed.
An additional benefit to a digital garden is that, because it can be updated easily, it is also easier to curate and maintain than other mediums. Unlike many other forms, where information is static and stuck in the context of when it was published, a digital garden can, and ideally should, change over time.
Having blogged and written more formally for a number of websites in the past, my public output of writing has gone way down in the last year or so, partially because of personal circumstances, but also because I was increasingly finding the time commitment as well as stricter format of blogs and articles more constrained. I want to start experimenting with less structured writing and notes, as well as incorporating other mediums such as audio and video. The digital garden format, requiring less commitment in order to get started, may also help me as I begin to explore different topics and trails of curiosity.
Going forward, I’ll be posting the majority of my shorter-form posts and thoughts there, and leaving my main site for longer-form writing as well as for more technical writing, projects and portfolio work related to things I’m doing in my IT career.
Here is the link to my digital garden, which is very much a work in progress at present: https://adoring-elion-4b1eac.netlify.app/
If you’re interested, here is the link to the tutorial that I utilised to help me build the site: https://maximevaillancourt.com/blog/setting-up-your-own-digital-garden-with-jekyll
I’d like to thank Helena Ng (@herrowna) from the Interintellect for all her help with the process of not only getting the site up and running, but also for introducing me to the digital gardening idea in the first place.
Scott Davies 