5 Reasons You Need a Digital Garden in 2026 (with Real Examples)

In this video, I break down what a digital garden is, 5 reasons you need one, and 3 different "gardener" styles. I'll walk through real examples, show how people turn notes into living maps of their thinking, and share tools you can use to start your own garden today. Tools to start your own garden: Obsidian https://obsidian.md/ Bear https://bear.app/ Notion https://www.notion.com/ Craft https://www.craft.do/ Apple Notes Blot https://blot.im/ Bear Blog https://bearblog.dev/ Quotion https://quotion.co/ Digital gardens shown: The Writer Floguo https://www.floguo.com Joel Hooks https://joelhooks.com Salman's Notes https://salman.io/notes/ Paul Graham https://www.paulgraham.com/index.html Steph Ango https://stephango.com/ The Collector Maggie Appleton https://maggieappleton.com/garden Rob's Garden https://www.iamrob.in/garden/ Anthony Amar https://anthonyamar.fr/Welcome+in+my+... Niki https://nikiv.dev Simon Späti https://www.ssp.sh/brain/ The Architect ryOS (Ryo Liu) https://ryo.lu/ MitchIvin XP https://mitchivin.com/ PostHog https://posthog.com/ Edoardo Lunardi https://www.edoardolunardi.dev ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎬 MY FILMING GEAR Camera https://amzn.to/4sTi3IR Lens https://amzn.to/4sFw5NX Microphone https://amzn.to/4sxwstO Lighting https://amzn.to/4tvnleJ Tripod https://amzn.to/4mqjPPK ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 MY APP STACK Cursor (AI Code Editor) https://cursor.com CleanShot X (Screenshot & Recording) https://cleanshot.com Raycast (Launcher & Productivity) https://raycast.com MyMind (Visual Bookmarking) https://mymind.com Bear (Notes & Writing) https://bear.app Things 3 (Task Manager) https://culturedcode.com/things Claude (AI Assistant) https://claude.ai Apple Journal (Daily Journaling) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/journal... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🛒 GEAR & TECH I RECOMMEND Soundbar https://amzn.to/4cK8w1B Monitor https://amzn.to/48mc3kr Vacuum Mop https://amzn.to/4sC0pJn Headphones https://amzn.to/4cOJzBh iPad Mini https://amzn.to/4szVGba MX Master Mouse https://amzn.to/4sDJNAS Oura Ring https://amzn.to/3QFKSe3 Kindle Paperwhite https://amzn.to/4vlvwLI Full gear list → https://lukevz.com/gear ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌐 FIND ME EVERYWHERE Threads → https://www.threads.com/@lukevanzyl Instagram →   / lukevanzyl   X → https://x.com/lukevz Website → https://lukevz.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters ➡ 00:00 Intro 00:45 What is a digital garden? 01:52 5 reasons you need a digital garden 01:56 Reason 1 – Give your messy ideas a home 03:09 Reason 2 – Publish like a human, not an algorithm 04:04 Reason 3 – A living map of your thinking 05:00 Reason 4 – Own your ideas (files over apps) 06:13 Reason 5 – Quantity quietly turns into quality 07:06 Digital garden styles overview 07:23 Style 1 – The Writer 07:58 Style 2 – The Collector 10:13 Style 3 – The Architect 11:55 Choosing your style and getting started 12:05 Tools to build your own garden 12:17 Outro ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DISCLAIMER: Some links above are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Other links may also be affiliate links. This costs you nothing extra and helps support the channel — thank you!