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Digital Gardening Tools and Resources

This collection of apps, tools and articles is here to help you learn more about digital gardening. Ideally, it's here to help you start your own garden.

What is "digital gardening"?

A garden is something inbetween a personal blog and a wiki. It's a collection of evolving notes, essays, and ideas that aren't strictly organised by their publication date. They're inherently exploratory – posts are linked through contextual associations. They aren't refined or complete - posts can be published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They're less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal "blogs" we're used to encountering on the web.

See the Theory, Philosophy, and Navel-gazing section for more on the 'what' of gardens.

An illustration of a plant with an pencil edit icon


Gardening Tools

Building a Public Garden

  • Roam Research - A personal notes system for interconnected thought
    • See the following resources for converting your private garden in Roam to a public garden:
  • Obsidian - a Roam-like knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. Also allows you to publish selections of your graph to the open web.
  • TiddlyWiki - A no-code personal wiki system
    • Stroll a TiddlyWiki plugin with bi-directional links and other Roam-like features
    • TiddlyMap - a mind-map plugin that shows visualizations for TiddlyWiki.
  • Gitbook
  • React-Notion - allows you to publish a React-based website sources from your Notion notes - "Notion as a CMS"
  • Gatsby Brain Theme - Roam-like bidirectional links in Gatsby.js
  • Gatsby Andy Theme
  • Gatsby Theme Garden - A set of tools to build a digital garden with Gatsby.js. Pull data from Roam Research or markdown.
  • Simply Jekyll - A Jekyll theme with bidirectional links, sidenotes, and transclusion
  • Digital Garden Jekyll Template - A simple, clean jekyll template with bi-directional links
  • Jekyll-Bonsai - A modern jekyll theme for semantically inclined digital gardeners.
  • Jekyll Garden - Clean Jekyll theme supporting bidirectional links.
  • Eleventy Garden - A minimal template with backlinks, built in Eleventy
  • Foam - Roam-like personal note management and publishing system built inside VSCode
  • Foamy NextJS - Basic Foam + NextJS with MDX starter for building a digital garden
  • Dendron - A structured note taking tool that merges the freedom of Roam-like linking with the order hierarchical organization
  • Hyperdraft - Turns plain markdown notes into a website as you write. Easy to setup and doesn't require builds or deploys.
  • Neuron - Managing and publishing system for plain-text Zettelkasten-style notes.
  • Innos Notes – Features include parallel pages, content blocks, and knowledge graph visualisations.
  • Trilium Notes - A hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.
  • Quartz - Publish your Obsidian or Roam digital garden to the web for free. Includes full-text search, graph visualization, and backlinks.

Building a Private Garden

  • Bangle.io - A simple, markdown-based notetaking app that runs locally on your machine.
  • Org Roam - non-hierarchical note-taking with org-mode in emacs
  • TheBrain - A tool for taking interconnected notes with an interactive graph.
  • The Archive - A fast plain text Markdown note-taking app with Zettelkasten features like linking and tagging.

Extra Gardening Tools


How-To's and Tutorials


Theory, Philosophy, and Navel-Gazing


Common Ground: Zettelkasten, Knowledge Graphs, Wikis, and Related Concepts


Digital Garden Directory

⭐️ = Featured; unique and exceptional examples

Gardener & Link 🛠 Build Tools 🌿Note Themes
⭐️ Andy Matuschak The Mystery Andy System Note-taking, education, tools for thought
⭐️ Gwern JS, CSS, Hakyll, Haskell Quantified self, spaced repetition, bitcoin
⭐️ Azlen Elza Notion + Python Design, Conversational interfaces, Tools for thought
⭐️ Buster Benson Behaviour change, dialogue, systems thinking
⭐️ Tom Critchlow Jekyll Indie consulting
⭐️ Chris Aldrich TiddlyWiki + TiddlyBlink + TiddlyMap Art of Memory, IndieWeb, humanities, commonplace books, thought spaces
⭐️ Gordon Brander Lettersmith Design patterns, storytelling, systems
⭐️ Bill Seitz Flask/Python with WikiFlux Product management, startups, wiki theory, engineering
⭐️ Alex Komoroske Cards Web – a custom OS platform Complexity theory, design, systems thinking
⭐️ Nikita Voloboev GitBook Tool obsessed. Code, web dev, art.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff TiddlyWiki Networked thinking, metacognition, evidence-based learning and self-education
Shawn Wang Sapper Web development, writing, speaking
Kevin Cummingham Gatsby Web development, React, AWS, GraphQL
Maggie Appleton Next.js Anthropology, metaphors, visual explanations, and web development
Chris Biscardi Sector / Toast? Web development, MDX, GraphQL, Gatsby
Neil Mather Org-mode Programming, politics, climate change
Wess Daniels Tiddlywiki (Pre-Release 5.1.23) Culture and systems change, liberation theology, tech and pedagogy
Aengus McMillin Gatsby Programming, Stoicism
Joel Hooks Gatsby + MDX Bootstrapping / indie-hacking, community building, web development
Ian Jones Gatsby Web development, Gatsby, Emacs
Wayan Jimmy Gatsby (Hasura Gitbook Starter) Coding, Learning notes
Markus Eleventy Design, linux, privacy
Max Stoiber The Mystery Andy System React, web development
Daniel Chapman Gatsby Books, Writing, Poetry
Will Stedden Custom coding a side project Machine learning, automated language generation, quantum physics art, online transparency
Salman Ansari Gatsby Start-ups, engineering
Fabien Benetou PmWiki (with plenty of extensions PHP/JS/NodeJS/WebXR/CSS/Processing/etc) Everytyhing but particularly programming, tools, tools for thoughts
Waylon Walker Gatsby python, data-engineering, coding, learning notes
Cristian Rojas Hugo Zettels theme 🇪🇸 Drawing, coding, biology, introspection
Chinarut Ruangchotvit TheBrain autobiography, personal transformation
Steve Dondley Jekyll, vimwiki Tech, software, automation, some politics and issues
Scott Spence Toast + MDX Web development, MDX, GraphQL, Gatsby, styled-components
Devine Lu Linvega C Sailing, Design, Livecoding, Plan9
Milkii Brewster MediaWiki Various life and tech topics, mostly Linux and audio FOSS
Maxime Vaillancourt Jekyll (open-source template) personal growth, ruby, web, linux
Andy Byers Jekyll notes on coding, note taking, personal knowledge management and other random thoughts.
Abstractxan C++ (Mizi) Tech, Art, Curating resources
Luciano Strika Jekyll Personal Wiki, Digital Garden. StrikingLoo's Haphazard Repository of Knowledge, Opinions and Trivia
Piotr Gaczkowski Jekyll + Roam Research as backend Book notes, Codex Vitae, cocktails, experiments
Tymon Zaniewski Jekyll (open-source template) personal wiki, DIY electronics, making music
Aquiles Carattino Aqui Brain Dump Science. Notes on books and papers. Technology Transfer. Working in Public
Yenly Ma Foamy NextJS and NextJS with MDX Digital garden of gardens. Learning and making in public.
Rosano Hyperdraft + Garden Music / Design / Technology
Chase McCoy Gatsby + MDX Web development, CSS, design systems
Charlie Trochlil Maxime's jekyll template Learning, art, online spaces, baking
Hiran Venugopalan Obsidian + Jekyll Design, Branding, Business, Typography, Product
Vlad Sitalo Roam Garden How to define code readability objectively? Applying SRS to all the things, Building Roam Garden
Joel Chan Roam Garden Knowledge synthesis, Scientific Creativity
Blue Book MkDocs Python, DevOps, life automation, health, art, ...
Oshyan Greene Discourse Productivity, Digital Gardening, Ideas, Reviews, and Recommendations
Clinton Boys org-roam + Hugo Writing, data science, math, life
David Ralph Lewis TiddlyWiki Writing, poetry, wellbeing, psychology
Soren Bjornstad TiddlyWiki + homegrown scripts Almost everything; emphasis on tech, reading, and how to live
Paul Batchelor WeeWiki Computer Music, Audio Programming, Literate Programming, Food
Memento MkDocs, MkDocs Newsletter Python, GNU/Linux, DevOps, Flutter, traveling, cooking, ...
Jacky Zhao Quartz Books, Cognitive Sciences, Education, Technology, and whatever else I happen to be reading

Other digital garden compilations:

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