A "living collection" is a group of plants grown for a defined purpose.
Growing a particular group of plants can focus the expertise and resources need to support those plants, can meet the needs for research and develop, and help with interpretation and outreach.
Garden design should plan to accomodate the for the needs of certain collections.
Information management is needed to efficiently maintain and record the contents of collections.
Larger botanic gardens may have one or more collections and types of collections, but even the smallest of botanic gardens will have at least one group plants that falls within these categories.
Living collections can be categorised as
Geographical
Taxonomic
Thematic
Ecological collections