Rose Breeder  

Listing last updated on Sat Apr 2025

Slough, Berkshire
United Kingdom

Charles Turner (May 3, 1818 Wilton - May 9, 1885), nurseryman and breeder

[From The Garden, May 16, 1885, p. 468:] THE death of Mr. CHARLES TURNER, of the Royal Nursery, Slough, on the morning of Saturday, the 9th inst..... He was born at Wilton, near Salisbury, on May 3, 1818...In early life he showed a great love for flowers; he commenced the culture of the Pink when quite a stripling, and at the age of
14 he won his first prize... In 1834, by which time he had secured other first prizes for Pinks and the same award
for Dahlias, he was apprenticed to a nurseryman at Salisbury....From Salisbury he went to Messrs. Cormack's Nursery at New Cross, and after a time to those of Messrs. Brown, of Slough. Here he added to his reputation as a successful cultivator, and, taking advantage of the rising tide in favour of a more extended culture of florists' flowers, he went into business on his own account at Chalvey, a small village near to Slough. Then about 1844 or 1845, on the retirement of Mr. W. Cutter from the proprietorship of the Royal Nursery-he having succeeded the Messrs. Brown-he removed there, and has occupied this nursery for forty years.

[From Climbing Roses, by Stephen Scanniello and Tania Bayard, p. 73:] Charles Turner, Turner Nurseries, Slough, England

Charles Turner of Slough appears repeatedly in The Garden: An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Gardening In All Its Branches, not only in association with the introduction of roses but also carnations and dahlias. Turner was more a nurseryman and exhibitor rather than a hybridizer, repeatedly introducing roses of others' breeding.