Digital gardens
Digital gardens are conscious rejections of the web as a stream. They embrace a web which is non-ephemeral and builds value over time and with continued investment.
Looking at a website this way also helps to “get rid of” the publish button, in that publishing frequently and without discretion is entirely the point.
Maggie Appleton outline the six patterns of gardening:
- Topography over timelines
- Continuous growth
- Learning in public and imperfection
- Playful, personal, and experimental
- Intercropping and content diversity
- Independent ownership
Notable examples
Required reading
- A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton
- 🌱 My blog is a digital garden, not a blog by Joel Hooks
- Building a digital garden by Tom Critchlow
- How the Blog Broke the Web by Amy Hoy
Maggie Appleton has collected a handy open source directory of digital gardens on GitHub.