I had created a program in C#. That program used about 60-70 MB of my memory. But when I minimized that program, it required less memory, that is, just 10 MB.
This has nothing to do with garbage collection - this happens with non .NET programs too (try minimizing your browser while looking at the memory footprint for it).
The moment you minimize a program, the windows OS will not longer need to keep the UI components in memory, hence the memory requirements are lower.
That is - windows trims the working set when an application is minimized.
See this channel9 thread and this KB article (thanks @Sasha Goldshtein).