Landowner
He took over Gore Farm in Dorset, bought by Henry Balfour Gardiner in 1924, from 1927, and continued what became a large-scale forestation project, based on training he had received at Dartington Hall, with conifers and beech trees. Here he set up a support group, the Gore Kinship.
He married Marabel Hodgkin in 1932; she was the daughter of the Irish fabric designer Florence Hodgkin. In 1933 he and Marabel bought the estate at Springhead, Dorset. They developed the Springhead Ring as a crafts network, as well as farming the estate. It also hosted much musical activity. On Gardiner's death the Springhead Trust was formed.
The family owned tea-growing estates in Nyasaland (now in Thyolo District, Malawi), known as the Nchima Tea and Tung Estate, of which Gardiner became chairman. Gardiner was active in the 1950s in dealing with colonial officials, with a view to conserving the underlying land. He had written about erosion in Nyasaland and Uganda already in the 1930s, in the New English Weekly. The Estate became a Trust in 1962.
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