Irrlicht Engine

Thanks for the clarification.
So if I am not mistaken the following will allow me to free memory from textures, meshes and nodes:
irr::scene::IMeshCache* mesh_cache = smgr->getMeshCache();
mesh_cache->clear();
video_driver->removeAllTextures();
node->remove();
I seem to have no issues so far ...

I am trying to figure out how to delete things that I have added to a scene manager so that I can free memory to make way for a new scene.

removing an irr::scene::IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* node like so: node->remove(); seems to work but I am still a bit unclear as to just what's happening.

(if say ...