I consider myself to be an “aspirationally technical person”, in that I don’t have a vast technical knowledge base to draw from, but I’d like to. This is doubly the case when it comes to building this website. I know about as much HTML as I did in the ’90s, which is not much. But I have ideas. And I have the internet to help. And that’s gotten me this far, so something must be working.

As I move now into the phase of actually building out the digital garden structure, I find myself quickly running into some stumbling blocks. A lot of this comes from the examples that I’ve been looking at, which are all fantastic, but which are also beyond the reach of my abilities to build. Right now, at least.

What’s a fledgling digital gardener to do when you don’t have the tools and skills you see others using and you think you might need? Well, for me, I just use the tools I have. I work with what I’ve got.

I’m going into this with a hope, though. A plan, even. Or the beginnings of a potential plan. Part of a digital garden’s very nature is that it is always a work in progress. So that’s very much what mine will be. Not only will the contents of the garden change over time, but I hope that the structure of the garden itself will evolve as I pick up new skills and gather better tools.

I’m essentially allowing myself to be the kid planting flowers in a dirt patch in the back yard. And I’ll hope to someday have a lovely greenhouse all to myself, with raised beds and proper irrigation and all the fancy bells and whistles.

There are still a few more basic decisions I need to make regarding how and where I’ll be putting up the garden. But again my ultimate choices will be driven largely by what I’ll be able to pull off right now.

So wish me luck over the next couple of days as I bang around under the hood and hope I build more than I break. And as always, feel free to send any tips or suggestions my way. New gardeners love advice from greener thumbs!

Before I jump into the actual building and planting of this digital garden project, I wanted to dig further into what others have done and learn more of the history.

So I started building a bit of a primer, mainly for my own reference as I build it out. But I figured it could also be a useful collection of links for anyone else out there who may be wandering down this same path.

The smart play will of course be to actually build this out into a proper primer at some point. And that will be a great garden project down the road! This really is the self-licking ice cream cone of website projects.

And so here are the links I’ve been collecting so far that I go back to as I get a handle on what I want this garden to be for me.

Maggie Appleton’s Brief History: this was my first big read on the history and concepts behind digital gardens, and I find myself coming back to it time and time again.

Daniel Singer’s take on digital gardens: another great read on the concept, with some excellent references and further reading that are absolutely worth exploring.

IndieWeb wiki article: Okay, this one is funny. I love the IndieWeb wiki. It’s a regular go-to resource whenever I’m working on something or looking for inspiration on a next project to tackle. So of course I would go to the wiki entry for digital gardens. And just now I’m reading it, and I get to the bottom, under the “See Also” section, and I read a quote that seems oddly familiar. Then I look at the source and I realize, holy shit that’s me! Folks, I’m trying not to laugh too hard and wake my family, because I just discovered that I’ve been quoted on the internet by a source I turn to all the time and it’s just the funniest thing I’ve ever accidentally come across.

There will be more. But these are some great places to get started. Happy reading!

And we’re back! A whole bunch of things hit at the same time last week and completely sidetracked me. I’ve also been struggling to regain some semblance of organization on both my physical and digital desktops, with only mixed success. Basically, life happened.

But I’m back now, and I’ve been having thoughts regarding how I want this digital garden project to go for me. It’s taking longer than I’d like, but I feel like that’s also always the case for me whenever I’ve tried actual gardening, so I guess this is just par for the course.

Here’s the concept I’m imagining so far.

The main digital garden page will essentially provide a garden overview. The garden itself can be broken into “plots”. This could be a simple way to break up the list of entries into subcategories. Sky’s the limit, here. The goal is to provide some form of organization.

The entries themselves, the “plants”, will likely each link to their own pages. Every page would essentially be a project page, or a page of potential if nothing else. It would be an area where development can occur, and thoughts can be jotted down along the way.

And there will be icons! Okay, too excited there. But I am thinking about having some kind of graphically identifiable quick indicator of the status of each entry. And I think this is where the garden metaphor gets to have some fun.

So this is what I’m thinking. Every entry link will have an icon at the front to serve as a status indicator of the “plant”. Right now I’m imagining new entries will be seedlings, which makes sense. Things in development and actively getting attention could be watering cans (getting some water to help the idea grow). A sunshine icon could serve to represent those entries that are waiting for their next phase or for some further development, but aren’t being addressed just yet (just letting nature do its thing). And then finally, a tree would represent something that has made it to fruition (maybe a fruit tree!). This would be the ultimate end state for a garden entry, I think. Something that made it all the way through to the end, and may even lead to new garden entries inspired (or grown) from it.

Of course, there would also be dead leaves/dead plant icons for those things that just died on the vine for whatever reason. And maybe there could be tilled soil to show a new area of interest or preparation for a new plot. Clearly I’m having too much fun with the gardening metaphors.

These are just some initial concepts on how I could make this work for me. So that’s what I’ll start drafting up this week. I’m still stumbling upon awesome sites on a daily basis that continue to inspire, so I’m sure I’ll be coming across even more ways to make this fun along the way!