Documented living plant collections distinguish botanic gardens from other green spaces and horticultural landscapes. With more than 3,500 collections worldwide, these institutions steward at least 105,634 species-around 30while fulfilling amenity, educational, scientific and conservation roles. However, twenty-first-century challenges demand a re-evaluation of how these collections are documented and managed. We argue that meeting these emerging needs requires higher standards of coordinated information management and innovation in data infrastructures across the global network. This Perspective critically examines data management practices of living collections supporting scientific research and conservation, from institutional to global levels. We identify the renewed demands on living collections, highlight exemplar global data infrastructures, define data challenges inherent to living collections and explore how current systems fall short in enabling a connected global system. Finally, we outline a vision for high-performance collections, fully integrated into a robust global data ecosystem.