He was born on 10 December 1810, the son of Alexander Garden (b.1786), a Glasgow merchant, and Rebecca, daughter of Robert Menteith, esq., of Carstairs.
In 1833 he obtained the Hulsean prize for an essay on the ‘Advantages accruing from Christianity.’ At Cambridge he belonged to the set of which Richard Chenevix Trench, F. D. Maurice, and John Sterling were among the leaders, whose intimate friendship, together with that of Edmund Lushington and George Stovin Venables, he enjoyed.
He was ordained priest in 1836 and originally served briefly in London, before gaining a post as Curate to Sir Herbert Oakeley at Bocking in Essex.
[4] His final role (1859 until death) was as Sub-Dean of the Chapel Royal at Holyrood Palace (succeeding Dr Wesley) directly serving Queen Victoria.
In his earlier years Garden attached himself to the Oxford school, which was then exercising a powerful attraction over thoughtful minds.
Trench describes a sermon he heard him preach in 1839 on ‘the anger of God,’ as ‘Newmanite and in parts very unpleasant.’ He subsequently became somewhat of a broad churchman, adopting the teaching of F. D. Maurice on the incarnation, the atonement, and other chief Christian doctrines, and contributing several thoughtful essays to the series of ‘Tracts for Priests and People,’ a literary organ of that school.