Hypertext Gardens
Mark Bernstein’s 1998 essay Hypertext Gardens appears to be the first recorded mention of the term. Mark was part of the early hypertext crowd – the developers figuring out how to arrange and present this new medium.
While the essay is a beautiful ode to free-wheeling internet exploration, it’s less about building personal internet spaces, and more of a manifesto on user experience flows and content organisation.
Its core ethos feels aligned with our emerging understanding of digital gardening. It captures the desire for exploratory experiences, a welcoming of digital weirdness, and a healthy amount of resistance to top-down structures.