page_title: Gartons Limited
section_title: Chairmen and directors
hierarchical_section_title: Gartons Limited / History of the business / Chairmen and directors
caption_attribution_description: English: George Peddie Miln, Managing Director of Gartons Limited
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: The eldest of the three Garton brothers, Robert Garton, was the first chairman of Gartons Limited. He died in February 1950, aged 91, a widower with no children. He was succeeded by the youngest brother, Thomas R. Garton, who died in May 1956. His son, John, was chairman from August 1963 until September 1965. Dr John Garton, the middle of the three brothers, was never, a director.
  Nine members of the Miln family were involved with the business over a period of seventy five years.
  Born at Linlathen, Broughty Ferry in 1861,  George Peddie Miln trained in a Dundee seed warehouse, the traditional Scottish training for a young man with ambition in the seed trade. He moved to Chester and ran one of its old established seed merchants before joining Gartons Limited as its first Managing Director in 1898. He was a member of Her Majesty's Board of Agriculture Seeds Advisory Council during the first World War. Both the Seeds Act 1920 and the formation of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany came about with his considerable encouragement during his three-year presidency of the Seed Trade Association of the United Kingdom. Of his eleven children, five trained in the seed trade. He was a Justice of the Peace in the City of Chester, a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a member of the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. He died aged 68 following an unsuccessful operation.
  When George P. Miln died in 1928 he was succeeded as managing director by his eldest son, Thomas Edward Miln (1890–1963) who for over twenty five years was chairman of the Retail Committee of the Seed Trade Association of the United Kingdom which proudly kept its independence from government control during World War II. A plant breeder as well as a businessman he is credited with the introduction of the sugar beet crop to UK agriculture. 
  When Gartons Limited became a public quoted company on the London Stock Exchange in 1947 T. E. Miln entered into a further ten year employment contract as Managing Director, even though he was already 59, such was his reputation. Both his sons, Wallace and George, joined him in the business.
  T. E. Miln was succeeded in 1961 by his elder son, Wallace Miln (1919–1994) also a skilled plant breeder and seed analyst.  Wallace Miln was one of the three founders of the British Association of Plant Breeders at the time of the introduction of the United Kingdom's Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964. He was twice President of the Seed Trade Association of United Kingdom. He left Gartons Limited in 1973 to join his elder son, Barnaby Miln, who had trained at Gartons and later with Northrup-King  in Minneapolis before setting up his own seed business at Bodenham in Herefordshire.
  From 1947 Gartons Limited's shares were quoted on the London Stock Exchange.  The Company's profits for the previous seven years had averaged £48,940. In 1949 the profit of £75,340  was the highest ever recorded  by the Company.
caption: George Peddie Miln
exif: {}