He was privately schooled in Kensington and in 1832 was sent to read for Holy Orders with the curate of Swaffham Prior in Cambridgeshire.
"Conscientious scruples" prevented him from entering the ministry, however, and later the same year he enrolled at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he completed his degree in 1836.
[2] He married Charlotte Horman the following year and the couple lived at Rudloe Cottage, near Box, then at Wraxall Lodge, Clifton, and finally (in 1848) at Elmhurst, near Batheaston, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Together, Berkeley and Broome published a series of "Notices of British Fungi" over a 37-year period, jointly describing no less than 550 new species.
[5] His botanical specimens and library were willed to the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, where they remain.