This.

Teemo, a good Yorick, a good Riven, a good Cho'gath.

Although admittedly, Cho'gath vs Garen is more of a skill matchup.

Both have great sustain. Garen can't spin on Cho without being ruptured. Both can silence one another. Both are tanky. Both have an execute ultimate... though Garens has more range and is better vs Cho than Cho's is against Garen.

Olaf is also quite good if played properly. If he starts to Q towards you, you axe him and run away.. Once his Q is down, you can freely harass him and win exchanges.

Gankplank works really well for me. That tiny dot from his passive keeps garen's passive from kicking in and like other people mentioned champs who can harass him from range do well. Make sure you bring exhaust and if garen does try to come at you then you can usually just kill him.

I would agree that most ranged tops give him a hard time because they out poke him. its had to farm minions for stacks of his w if he is being damaged every time he goes for a last hit.

As a player of both GP and Garen, early game this is a really bad deal (to me) because GP's mana cost for Q is so high. If you're trying to proc passives on him with Qs, that means that you're not using it to last-hit minions and get the bonus gold, and GP is only good for like 4 Qs before he's OOM and then you need to go in to last hit. Mid-game and late-game? Now we're talking about item builds and farm, but early game is not good unless the Garen is bad or your jungle is camping the lane.

Swain can annoy the ever living hell out of most tops, and I personally like running Top Swain since Nevermove I think makes every melee top hate me forever.

Throw a torment now and then in and with Swain's passive you can keep mana flowing and constantly harass.

Not to mention if you wanna check a bush throw Nevermove in it from a good distance. If Garen is hiding he'll be getting out quickly!

best way to counter garen is by warding every bush. cause, guess who is in the bush?

garen is a very melee oriented char. don't expect anyone going head to head with him will win and don't try to kite a good garen(his q gets rid of movement decreases). go with anything with range. yorick, jayce, teemo, some tanky adc's(Quinn, or graves)

a good garen build crit chance and movement speed in lane. counter by building armor or **** tons of pots(itll help in the early laning phase). and also get a good gank from your jungler. a good garen does not(normally) ward and after lvl 6 pushes lane hard

lulu top counters him good, it's easy to avoid being silenced if you are ranged, if he runs at you with his q it just makes it easier for you to land your q slow on him, in lane keep poking him

You need one of two things:

1) Someone who can 100-0 him, because he will outsustain you if you don't.
2) Someone who can constantly keep harassing him. Once Jayce gets tear he can do this more or less. Teemo is a horrible pick against Garen though, unless the Garen is retarded. Championselect says Teemo counters Garen but it isn't true, it's entirely a skill matchup. Garen outtrades Teemo, but if Teemo can kite Garen then he shuts him down.

I play Garen and the one who gives me the most problems (I **** on Irelia, at least in my division, until like level 9, when laning is over anyway) is Darius. When Darius is intelligent he outtrades Garen. Just don't let Garen bait your cooldowns. Again Darius vs Garen is a skill matchup, and they have similar ults (executes at approximately the same amount of health), but if you either hook him every time he gets too close, or you trade blows if he tries to come at you, you will come out on top. The only thing you can't do is allow him to bait your hook and miss, because then he will basically destroy you.

I'd imagine someone like Fizz, who can burst engage and disengage quickly, would do quite well against him. The silence wouldn't really matter, and Fizz's empowered W would do more than Garen's spin to win, then Fizz can disengage once silence wears off with W. Only issue you'd have is mana.

Best of luck dude.

EDIT: AAAAAAAaaaand just noticed this thread was necro'd. Lol.