To thrive and stay relevant to the needs of society, botanic gardens need to be able to adapt and change. This is especially the case now that there is such an urgent need to explain the changing world to visitors. There is also a need to accept that their collections and gardens are difficult to change due to their inherent limitations and historical context. This paper seeks to address this issue by providing an overview of one of Europe’s oldest botanic gardens, de Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam, as one which has developed a collection policy to provide greater flexibility to shape the organisation while retaining the spirit of place or genius loci. The paper provides a framework to help reconsider the context and content of collection themes and to provide a sustainable basis that best meets the needs of the current organisation. This framework also provides a flexible approach to planning collections in the future.