The garden is where things grow: the sources, notes, questions, germinating ideas and projects I’m tending, before they are ready to harvest. Some will ripen into produce; others will compost and feed something else. The garden itself lives in my personal knowledge management system, Tana Outliner. To learn about how I tend it, have a look at my knowledge gardening practices.
Here you can get a glimpse of what’s happening in my garden at the moment. Before the end of the year, I plan to open up some additional areas of the garden – the potting sheds, perhaps – starting with the books, articles, videos and podcasts that have most informed my thinking, along with my notes on them – my notes on Neil Theise’s “Notes on Complexity” are an early example. After that, I hope to add the learning questions that guide my explorations as another way in.
My gardening is grounded in practice. As well as tending a vibrant balcony garden, every couple of weeks I head to Living Vital, a community garden at Stanmer Organics, just outside Brighton, to catch up with friends, potter around, get my hands dirty and learn about how change happens.
Gardens and gardening in my writing
- Cross-pollination: Complexity, corruption and community gardening (Apr 2026). My reflections on being part of the Living Vital community garden, and a short story about corruption by a fellow gardener.
- Landscapes of learning (Oct 2025). From knowledge gardening to community gardening.
- Knowledge gardening in complexity, in action (Aug 2025). An example of how my knowledge garden can be fruitful.
- No-mow May (Jun 2024). More on Nora Bateson’s thinking about complexity, meadows and emergence.
- Combinations: Death-star thinking, meadows, love and constraints (May 2024). A poem from Nora Bateson’s book Combining, and an update on my knowledge gardening.
- Selected seedlings (Jul 2023). My early thinking on complexity, causality and impact, and my plan to tend a digital garden of ideas.