To display different tabs in an application, we want to replace the Nodes in a scene with new nodes. When we do this (as shown in the attached demo example) the nodes vanish in the UI but are still referenced by the Screengraph, so they do not get garbage collected. I investigated this with a profiler.

You may even reproduce the bug with clicking > then 10 times on the "click me" button. You will receive an OutOfMemoryException.

I added one example with VBox/HBox Layout and one with Grid Layout (jfxtras) showing the removal and regeneration of all entries on button click.

I added one example that just deletes the nodes from the scene (you see in the Profiler that the SwingTextFields will not be garbage collected)