I first came across the idea of “digital gardening” in a post titled My blog is dead. Long live my digital garden on Rach Smith’s site. This led me to A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton.
As soon as I had read about the concept, I knew I wanted a digital garden of my own. Since then, I’ve been pondering the question of why I like the idea of digital gardens so much.
Many of the blogs I’d come across were focused on offering advice, presenting opinions or expressing current emotions. However, one of the goals of digital gardening is to “learn in public” – that is, the digital gardener is taking notes on reading or project work and sharing what’s been discovered. This broadens the possibilities for a personal site in a way that definitely appeals to me.
I also like the freedom to go back to older posts and revise them. I expect that for at least a few of the posts in the Notes and Reflections category, I’ll reread books or rethink ideas and add more thoughts.
With the Notes and Reflections category set up as a space where I can consider any topic of interest to me, I don’t expect ever to run out of ideas for things to write about.
Perhaps a somewhat stranger reason for my preference is that I tend to visualise websites: they have a spatial structure in my mental image of them. A blog that consists entirely of posts in chronological order feels like climbing down a very long ladder into a well, especially if there aren’t easy ways to navigate the archives. A digital garden with lots of interconnected links feels more like wandering through a maze… or perhaps a large, complex garden. It’s a more comfortable space for me.
So, does this site count?
This website was certainly inspired by the concept of digital gardening. But is it a digital garden? I’ll leave that up to other people to decide, if there’s anyone out there who cares enough about the distinction.
Some definitions of digital gardening discourage presenting posts in chronological order, and I’ve visited sites that can be navigated only by following links from post to post. But some of my posts here have a definite chronological aspect, such as my Artist’s Way diary. And I’ve set up various navigation options to suit (I hope) the preferences of different readers, including lots of tags, a complete list of posts by year and a page containing a random selection of posts from the site.
Maybe this site is a hybrid between a blog and a digital garden. A blorden, perhaps?