My first experience with the term “digital gardening” was in this adult swim commercial for “For Profit Online University”. In that context digital gardeners were basically people given jobs on Mechanical Turk. Ive used the term with my friends over the last decade to describe any sort of endless digital grind-like toil. New crypto games come to mind. (So does Animal Crossing…)

https://youtu.be/XQLdhVpLBVE (Concept is introduced at 6:30, but the whole video is hilarious)