[1][2] He was the son of William Masters, the nurseryman and botanist of Canterbury and author of Hortus duroverni.

[3] Tylden Masters studied at the King's College London and the University of St Andrews.

[5] Tylden Masters was the editor of the Gardeners' Chronicle between 1866 and 1907, which led to him corresponding with Charles Darwin.

[4] His obituary in The American Florist credited him with preventing Kew Gardens "from being handed over to a political clique", with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) holding onto its Chiswick Garden, and for preventing "confiscation" of the RHS Lindley Library "in the dark days of the society at South Kensington".

[7] His obituary in Nature recites that his most definitive contributions to botany was when he was older and studying Coniferae since he wrote many papers to the Linnean and Horticultural Societies regarding their "structure and taxonomy.