Career
He was elected to the House of Commons at a by-election in July 1936, after East Grinstead"s Conservative Member of Parliament Henry Cautley was ennobled as Baron Cautley. Clarke held the seat until he stood down at the 1955 general election. He was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex in 1932, and in the 1955 New Year Honours, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire), "for political and public services".
Clarke was the son of Colonel Stephenson Clarke.
The Stephenson Clarkes were the founders in 1730 of Stephenson Clarke Shipping, Britain"s oldest shipping company. In 1892, Ralph Clarke"s father purchased a 200-acre (081 km2) estate at Borde Hill, near Haywards Heath in West Sussex, and from about 1912 began collecting trees and shrubs began by financing plant-collecting expeditions to the Himalayas and China.
Ralph Clarke took up residence there is 1949, after the death of his father, and opened the gardens to the public in 1965.