Climate change triggered forest die-back is a huge concern worldwide. Arboretums and common gardens comparing geographic origins within species can provide a large body of valuable information and material usable to increase their resilience. Common gardens have been foundational in demonstrating the existence of genetic diversity, local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity. They have also been instrumental for forest management and policy, e.g. for guiding seed transfer rules and their marketing. While the current generation of common gardens has seen a renewed interest for developing process-based niche models or genome-trait-environment association studies, they are too limited in the number of species, provenances and habitats they sample in the context of climate change and novel bioeconomy focus. A new generation of common gardens is now needed.