[4] In the year 1994–1995, he received the Paul Erdős Award for his contributions to UK and international mathematical challenges and Olympiads.
[15] The Junior and Intermediate Challenges continued to be run by Gardiner personally until the foundation of the UKMT, with numbers of entrants reaching 105,000 and 115,000 respectively in the year 1994–1995.
In 1995, Gardiner realised that, due to the enormous popularity increase that had taken place, the national mathematics competitions had become too large an enterprise to be sustained in their current form.
[19] Consequently, he advertised for the formation of a committee and a host institution to establish an organisation (the UKMT) that would be able to collectively run the competitions.
Gardiner continued to contribute to the activities run by the UKMT, acting as leader of the IMO team in the years 1991, 1992, 1994, and 1995.
The Birmingham University Mid-term Mathematical Puzzles were a take-home competition for 11- to 15-year-olds and 16- to 18-year-olds, reaching figures of 3,500 and 1,200 participants respectively.
Speakers included Simon Singh, Robin Wilson, Colin Wright, and Rob Eastaway.