In 1911 he was joined at Portsea by the newly ordained George Armitage Chase, who would later serve Garbett after his ordination to the episcopate, as examining chaplain.

[10] Garbett was a popular public figure, especially as a pastoral bishop, famous for trudging the length of his dioceses with his walking stick, visiting both clergy and lay people in the towns he passed through.

On 17 April 1944, Garbett appeared on the cover of Time magazine after he had been persuaded by the British Ministry of Information to go to the United States to discuss religious freedom in Russia.

In a notable statement made to the House of Lords in 1942, Garbett denounced Nazi Germany's extermination of Polish Jews, calling it "the deliberate and cold-blooded massacre of a nation.

Later that year, he underwent surgery and spent the last months of his life in a convalescent home where he continued to write and correspond until his death, on 31 December 1955.