Gartons Limited
Dr John Garton, of the firm of Garton Brothers of Newton-le-Willows in the United Kingdom was the Originator of Scientific Farm Plant Breeding. He is credited as the first scientist to show that the common grain crops and many other plants are self-fertilizing. He also invented the process of multiple cross-fertilization of crop plants.
In 1898 the business became known as Gartons Limited and, under the inspired commercial leadership of George Peddie Miln, was to become the British Empire's largest plant breeding and seed company.
A public company from the start, its shares were traded on the London Stock Exchange from 1947.
History of the business
John Garton and his two brothers, Robert and Thomas, were in business with their father, Peter, in Golborne and Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, England, as corn and agricultural merchants.As a young man, John Garton, was the first to understand that whilst some agricultural plants were self-pollinating, others were cross-pollinating. He began experimenting with the artificial cross pollination firstly of cereal plants, then herbage species and root crops.
He attracted the friendship and encouragement of a young Scottish seedsman, George Peddie Miln who had trained in Dundee and was seed manager of Dicksons Limited of Chester.
Knowing he had developed a far reaching new technique in plant breeding John Garton began to carry out many thousands of controlled crosses on fields at the family farm in Newton-le-Willows. He and his colleagues tried in 1889 to interest the UK government's new Board of Agriculture in the invention they called Scientific Farm Plant Breeding. But this was to no avail.
Commercial start
Robert and John Garton made a commercial start as R. & J. Garton. They launched their first variety, 'Abundance' oat, in 1892.Generous publicity followed in the press, together with the publication of articles by botanists in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and in the Transactions of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland in 1894 and 1898. Professor Robert Wallace of the University of Edinburgh said 'Under the system originated by Mr John Garton an infinite number of new and distinct breeds of oats, barleys, wheats, clovers and grasses have been produced'.
In 1898 a public company was launched, Gartons Limited. It was based in Warrington. Many of the 600 or so subscribers for £50,000 cumulative preference shares of 6% rising to 10% were farmers.
Robert and John Garton agreed to continue to work for the company for five years for £500 and to receive the entire ordinary share capital of the new company of £50,000.
George Peddie Miln joined the company as managing director, together with Robert Garton, Thomas R. Garton, Thomas Baxter and Arthur Smith as directors.
It rapidly became the United Kingdom's best known plant breeding and seed company, and also exported seeds widely.
The Garton Lectureship at Edinburgh University
In 1900 an endowment was made to found the Garton Lectureship in Indian and Colonial Agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. The Garton Lectureship still exists as a biennial award to promising young lecturers in the School of Agriculture but is without emoluments and is no longer tied to colonial agriculture.Publicity in USA
writes:From the late nineteenth century on, seed companies began to play an increasingly important, if not dominant, role in breeding non-cereal crops and a major role in producing varieties for market gardening and for private growers. The production of new cereals was a somewhat different matter – the fact that they were so vitally important for national food supplies and involved large-scale and long-term work made it more likely that they would be the concern of government.
There were exceptions though, one being the family firm of Gartons of Warrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Their production of cereals – oats in particular – was appreciated as internationally important during the latter quarter of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth; Mark Carleton visited them in 1898 and was reportedly astonished at their work, Garton varieties were widely exported throughout the British Empire and the United States.
"That private companies could be so effective in breeding cereal grains indicated that there was no link of necessity between their improvement and the publicly funded research that was to so dominate this sector over so much of the next century."
In 1903 Professor Willet M. Hays of the Agricultural Experiment Station in Minnesota, USA said 'No one has done more brilliant work in Agricultural Plant Breeding than Messrs. Garton, and this is from now on to be recognised.'
Attempted intellectual property donation
The introduction to their 1899 Spring Catalogue reads:Our original idea for the dissemination of the seed of these new breeds as the stocks became sufficiently large for the purpose, was through some public body as in the form of an annual free seed distribution upon similar lines to the free seed distributions carried out by the Governments of the United States, Canada, and several of the British Colonies.
On three successive occasions we approached Her Majesty's Government with this object in view, the first occasion being on the formation of the Board of Agriculture, in 1889, when we offered to hand over the whole of the valuable results, providing that body would undertake their dissemination and the continuance of the work, either in the form of an annual free seed distribution or at current market price.
Upon the last occasion our offer was accompanied by letters and reports from all the leading Agricultural Professors, Botanists, and Scientists in the Kingdom, setting forth the national benefit which would accrue from the dissemination of the results in the form we had suggested. The final reply of Her Majesty's Government, however, was that whilst fully recognising the value of the work, owing to there being no precedent upon which to act in such a matter, they were unable to avail themselves of the offer. This was much to be regretted for had our ideas been carried into effect the British farmer would have been placed in immediate possession of important results, which in the hands of a Public Company would not reach him for many years.
Our efforts in this direction not having been successful, and as we were not in a position to undertake the work of distribution ourselves, we have placed it in the lands of a Public Company, and we trust that the continued efforts made by us on behalf of the British farmer will be fully appreciated by him, through his support of the Company responsible for the distribution of the seed of our new breeds of agricultural plants
R. & J. Garton''
Crop innovations
The firm's first historic introduction was 'Abundance' oat, the world's first agricultural plant variety bred from a controlled cross, introduced to commerce in 1892.Among the other 170 crop varieties that Gartons bred and introduced to commerce were:
- 'Standwell' barley, introduced in 1898, the first barley bred from a controlled cross.
- 'White Monarch' wheat, introduced in 1899, the first wheat bred from a controlled cross.
- 'Invincible' barley, introduced in 1899, the first crop plant control crossed for disease resistance.
- Perennialized red clover, introduced in 1898, the first controlled cross clover.
- Perennialized Italian ryegrass, introduced in 1907, the first controlled cross pasture grass.
- 'Apex' winter wheat, introduced in 1967, the first wheat to be granted plant breeders' rights in the United Kingdom.
John Garton's honorary doctorate
The programme and report of the Graduation Ceremony held on 21 July 1922 reads
The Senatus Academicus recently conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws upon the late John Garton, who duly accepted it. The Degree would have been formally conferred on the present occasion but for his lamented death. Mr Garton invented the process of multiple cross fertilisation of crop plants and has been the means in a great measure of revolutionising field culture by producing hundreds of new and improved varieties which have greatly increased the yields of all the common crops of the farm. The achievement proved to be of immense national importance during the War.
Mr Garton first showed that the common grain crops and many other crop plants are self-fertilising. Up till that time they were generally believed to be fertilised by wind or insects.
Mr Garton’s results got in crossing different species of grasses helped to develop the modern conception of species.
Twenty-two tears ago Mr Garton provided the means to establish the Garton Lectures on Colonial and Indian Agriculture, and subsequently he permanently endowed them as an integral part of the work of the Chair of Agriculture.
Plant breeding grounds
The plant breeding grounds were initially at Newton-le-Willows but moved to Acton Grange, two and a half miles south west of Warrington before settling in about 1930 at Little Leigh near Northwich in Cheshire. A seed development farm was located in Essex, and root crop trials were located on farms in the north of England and in Scotland. Traditionally groups of farmers were invited in mid-summer to inspect the plant breeding grounds and be entertained by the company.Initially the Seed Warehouse for cleaning and distributing seed was in Newton-le-Willows but moved to Friars Green in Warrington in 1899 by which time the offices were at Thynne Street, Warrington. A purpose-built seven story Seed Warehouse and separate Head Office were built at Arpley, Warrington in 1910. There was an L. M. S. railway siding into the Seed Warehouse. On 25 April 1912 the Seed Warehouse burned down but quickly rebuilt largely by the same builders. Seed cleaning machinery, some unique to the company, ensured the purity of the product. As time went by fewer seeds were 'picked' or cleaned by hand by upwards of one hundred staff as machinery became more sophisticated. Across the top of roof of the warehouse was the company's name which had to be disguised during wartime.
From the beginning Gartons Limited tested its seeds for purity and germination at its own seed testing laboratories in Warrington. The 1920 Seeds Act, for the first time, made testing and declaring for purity and germination a legal requirement for all seed companies. The Official Seed Testing Station was created in 1917, firstly in Victoria Street in Westminster, London and then in 1921 within the newly formed National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge. Larger seed companies including Gartons Limited were licensed to carry out their own purity and germination testing.