James Gardiner (Scottish politician)

James Gardiner (1860 – 31 December 1924) was a Scottish farmer and Liberal Party politician.

Gardiner was born near Crieff in Perthshire in 1860, the son of John Gardiner, a crofter, and his wife Harriet (née Allan). He was educated at Morrison's Academy in Crieff and also received private tuition. In 1887 he married Elizabeth Maude Christie the daughter of an engineer from Ruthvenvale, near Auchterarder. Elizabeth Gardiner died of heart failure in a London nursing home in 1921 and in 1922 Gardiner married Elizabeth Christie whose father had homes in Mokameh in Bengal and at Comrie.

Gardiner followed his father into agriculture. He built up a seed potato and grain merchant’s business in Perth. He became a tenant farmer and developed one of the largest potato farms in Scotland, occupying an extensive portion of land on the Drummond Castle estate of the Earl of Ancaster. had a distinguished career in Scottish agriculture. He was sometime Director of the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture and President of Scottish National Farmers’ Union. During the Great War he served as a Member of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Potato Advisory Committee. He was also a Member of the Council of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. He was an acknowledged expert in practical agriculture in all its advanced branches and was an authority on agricultural plant breeding, raising several of the most popular immune varieties of potatoes in cultivation. He later passed from specialising in potatoes to general farming and stock - breeding.

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