Harnessing the electron's second fundamental property, its spin, is the basis of spintronic phenomena and devices [1] . These include recently discovered phenomena like the quantum anomalous Hall effect [2] in magnetic topological insulators [3] , spin transfer torque [4,5] effects in nonmagnetic metal / ferromagnetic metal / oxide heterostructures and spin transfer torque (SOT) switching of ferromagnets [6,7] , and ultimately of FMIs [8] . To realize novel circuit devices based on these effects a rich variety of specifically tailored magnetic materials has still to be developed. For instance, the study of exotic phenomena occurring at the boundary of topological insulators with ferromagnets requires the latter to be insulating, yet to retain magnetic properties including PMA.One of the most prominent FMIs classes is that of iron garnets, of which the most well studied is Y 3 Fe 5 O 12 (YIG). The ultra low magnon damping characteristics [9] and magneto-optical properties [10,11] of YIG are well known. The former makes YIG a suitable candidate for spin wave logic [12] and signal transmitters [13] due to the extremely large magnon decay length of several tens of millimeters. Epitaxial YIG thin films can, in principle, also possess PMA as a result of magnetization-lattice coupling [14] for thicknesses below nm [15,16] , but the fabrication of YIG films with complete out-of-plane remanence remains elusive because of its low magnetocrystalline anisotropy and magnetoelastic coefficients. In contrast, 50 nm thick thulium iron garnet (Tm 3 Fe 5 O 12 , TmIG), has been reported to show PMA [17,18] caused by magnetoelastic anisotropy when grown epitaxially on (111)-oriented gallium gadolinium garnet (Gd 3 Ga 5 O 12 or GGG) [19] .We recently demonstrated [8] reversible magnetization switching in 8 nm thick TmIG by utilizing SOT from an adjacent platinum layer, but a detailed structural and magnetic characterization of TmIG in the few-nm thickness regime is still lacking. In the present article, we provide a comprehensive description of the structural characteristics and magnetic properties of TmIG/GGG down to a thickness of nm. Furthermore we demonstrate that efficient spin transport can be achieved through the TmIG/Pt interface by measuring spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) in Pt. We exploit this method to measure the anisotropy field of the strained TmIG film electrically, which is inaccessible by conventional magnetometry measurements due to the dominant paramagnetic contribution of the GGG substrate. These results emphasize the potential of TmIG as a spintronic material.Structural characterization of the TmIG films are summarized in Fig.1. With xray reflectometry (XRR) scans (not shown), we measured film thicknesses of PMA epitaxial TmIG down to nm nm . To quantify the strain state of TmIG via XRD we measured a nm thick TmIG film, since thinner films could not be resolved with enough intensity using high resolution XRD. The symmetric XRD spectra shown in Fig.1a demonstrates a fully strained film with lattice spacing of ...