Gardner was the second son of a rich Manchester cotton merchant, Robert Gardner.He was well educated and travelled extensively in France and Germany achieving an excellent command of the German language, evident in his translation of poems by Goethe, Uhland and Heine.In Germany, he met Ludwig Becker and they remained friends for life.Gardner married Margaret Cumming in the early 1840s and they had two daughters, Jessie and Anne. Robert Gardner owned properties in Van Diemen's Land and expected his son to oversee them. He purchased a ship, the Hannah, and Gardner, his family and a number of free settlers sailed from Liverpool to Launceston. Here Gardner purchased Newnham Hall and involved himself in civic affairs. He was elected Vice-President of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute and appointed a Justice of the Peace. He was friendly with Governor William Denison and supported the continuation of transportation. Gardner was appointed a Member of the Legislative Council for the County of Cornwall in 1855, but died later that year. An In Memoriam piece printed in the front of Gardner's selected work of poems Rythms from My Scrap Book called him a charitable man with a 'cultivated and elegant mind'. His last days were spent correcting the proof sheets of his work.
