The Concept of a Digital Garden
Thoughts on publicly sharing notes that are still growing, not polished posts
How Is It Different from a Blog
When I first heard "digital garden," I thought it was just a blog. But it's a bit different. A blog publishes finished articles in chronological order. A digital garden makes still-growing notes public.
A blog post is done once it's published. You can edit it, but usually you don't. Digital garden notes get continuously updated. They grow from seed stage (short ideas) to sprout (more fleshed-out notes) to tree (proper write-ups).
After learning about this concept, I thought "maybe I should try it."
I Gave It a Shot
I decided to make some of my Obsidian notes public. Used a tool called Quartz on GitHub Pages to convert my Obsidian vault into a website. Setup took half a day.
Published 67 notes. Categorized their status as seed, sprout, or tree. 41 seeds, 19 sprouts, 7 trees. Most were seeds -- one-line ideas or link collections.
The Problem: Notes Too Embarrassing to Share
A seed-stage note looks like this: "Need to study how React Server Components streaming works." Just one line. Publishing this? Who sees this and gets anything out of it?
But the digital garden philosophy says this is fine. Sharing imperfect notes creates connections and invites feedback. (In reality, my digital garden gets about 3 visitors a day, so feedback isn't exactly rolling in.)
A month after going public, I switched 11 of the seed notes back to private. They were too raw, and I worried they might actually hurt my reputation.
Unexpected Benefits
Regardless of whether notes are public, writing with the awareness that "this might be public someday" improved note quality. Before, I'd write things like "check this later lol" -- now I at least write complete sentences. Something future-me can also understand.
I also started deliberately creating connections between notes. Linking related concepts while organizing things gave structure to knowledge that had been scattered.
Three months later, 4 sprout notes graduated to trees. Two of those became published blog posts. The digital garden served as an incubator for blog content.
Can It Coexist with a Blog
Right now I'm running both a blog and a digital garden separately. Polished articles go on the blog, work-in-progress notes go in the garden. But maintaining both is a hassle. Over time, I'll probably either merge them or drop one.
The truth is, the biggest beneficiary of a digital garden isn't the visitor -- it's the author. More than whether notes are public, the mindset of "growing notes" is what matters. Not writing once and forgetting, but continuously tending to them. That's why the "garden" metaphor fits.
Even if only 3 people visit, it's fine. The most frequent visitor is me anyway. Though it would be nice if a few more people stopped by.