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There is no real/agreed-upon definition for a digital garden. Instead, there is a certain flavor of note-taking and blog publishing that is associated with the term. An aura, if you will. Like dark academia or cottagecore, digital gardening is an internet aesthetic for nerds, knowledge workers, and internet philosophers, and thus has fuzzy edges.

Sites that self-identify as such often feature

• liberal usage of linking between pages, posts, and outside sources
• much less structure than traditional blogs. In particular, little to no concern with the chronological ordering of content
• publication of incomplete and/or mutable content
  These characteristics are generally included in canonical writings on digital gardens and nerdy note-taking.

I have seen it described as "learning in public" - I agree; I see it as a version of alternative personal blogging that focuses on growth and development of ideas. To me, Private gardening is a note-taking system. Public gardening is an information-sharing philosophy. - digital gardening describes the practice of both.

modern zettelkasten is digital gardening, but since all definitions of Zettelkasten are speculative and many note taking systems are over-formalized, it is more apt (in my opinion) to use the term "digital garden" because it is less precise in its description.

References

See Also

• small library of digital gardens

Mentions

Created 2025-03-17 Last Modified 2025-06-11