A system and method can support smart buffer management in a distributed data grid. A buffer manager in the distributed data grid can provide a plurality of buffers in a buffer pool in the distributed data grid, wherein the plurality of buffers are arranged in different generations and each buffer operates to contain one or more objects. The buffer manager can prevent a garbage collector from directly recycling the memory associated with each individual object in the buffer pool, and can allow the garbage collecting of one or more objects in one or more buffers in a particular generation to be performed together.