Digital garden
Introduction
I often reflect on who I want to be as both an artist and educator, and how that intersects with the way I present myself online. I don’t want this website to be just a portfolio of polished, finished work, because that wouldn’t fully represent who I am or how I create. My process is nonlinear and web-like, full of connections that form slowly over time. I make a lot of messy, incomplete things, some of which grow into fully realized projects. That messiness is just part of being an artist.
So this space is more than a showcase; it’s a living record of my learning, growing, gathering, and experimenting. It’s my digital garden. Some parts are sprouting, some are in full bloom, and others are decaying and composting into rich ground for future ideas.
Digital Garden: a Definition
A digital garden is a personal, often non-linear collection of notes, ideas, and resources that evolves over time. Unlike a blog, which typically presents polished, chronological entries, a digital garden is more like a growing knowledge base: ideas are planted, cultivated, and revised as the author's thinking develops. It can include rough notes, essays in progress, and interconnected thoughts.
Learning in Public
This approach to a web presence promotes learning in public by embracing unrefined, early ideas and sharing them publicly without polish. It's all about linking your own ideas as connections and patterns organically emerge over time. According to educator Mike Caulfield, it’s “a personal Wikipedia,” something that evolves by “building complexity over time.” In fact, that's why I decided to make use of the wiki format as the framework of my site!
Internet Nostalgia and the Technopastoral
Caulfield also calls it part of the technopastoral tradition, an updated take on the pastoral genre of art and literature. It’s a way of living online that doesn’t reject technology, but instead seeks to return toward the authenticity, individuality, and enthusiasm of early internet culture. This approach aims to create distance from the relentless “streams” of online life— think social media and endless scrolling patterns that seek to guide users and shape their online experience on highly curated platforms.
Designer and digital garden advocate Maggie Appleton agrees. She claims this style “harkens back to the early days of the web when people had fewer notions of how websites ‘should be.’” Appleton highlights how early web design encouraged curiosity and autonomy, and suggests that digital gardens may offer “a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information – one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space. … It’s hyperlinking at it’s best. You get to actively choose which curiosity trail to follow, rather than defaulting to the algorithmically-filtered ephemeral stream. The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.”
I grew up with the internet, and I remember how building websites once felt like a kind of freedom. It was an invitation to connect with others and build community through shared curiosity and self-expression. I taught myself to code (rather haphazardly), and by age 13, I had made my first website: a Dragonball Z fan page. It brought me into contact with other fans, and eventually, I started helping others build their own sites around what they loved too.
In that same spirit, I hope this website in its messy, evolving, and always in progress nature, can be a space for connection, curiosity, and growth. Like the gardens that inspired it, I want it to feel alive. 🍃
Examples
Some digital gardens I draw formatting inspiration from: