Around Hemel Hempstead it is greener than anyone driving through on the bypass would guess. Parks start at the end of most roads. Two chalk rivers and a canal run through the valley. Farmland and woods begin where the estates stop. For a new town, Hemel ended up with a surprising amount of countryside inside its edges.
The nearest public green space is roughly 150 metres from the average home, and there are about 22 within a kilometre. They range from Gadebridge Park, running up the Gade valley from the Old Town, to the Box Moor Trust's moorland and commons and the grass verges and playing fields the planners put between the neighbourhoods. A dog walk in Hemel starts at the front gate and can be over before the kettle has boiled.
Water is roughly 630 metres away on average, with about 22 stretches of river, canal or pond within a kilometre. The Gade and the Bulbourne meet in the valley, the Grand Union Canal runs past Boxmoor, Apsley and Winkwell, and Hemel Water Gardens sit in the town centre. The canal that once carried Midlands freight to London is now mostly towpath walkers and narrowboats, which is a better trade for the people living alongside it.
The National Cycle Network is about 1.4 kilometres from the average home, and about 18% of postcodes are close to a route. None of the area is ancient woodland. Past the town's edge are mixed farmland and woodland, with scattered villages on the Chiltern Hills to the north and west, and the Ashridge Estate a short drive away. A chalk hill south of the town gives the best view of the whole valley.
The rated-premises list counts 528 shops, 56 pubs and 62 restaurants across the town. That mix belongs to a place laid out around neighbourhood shopping parades, with a parade within reach of every estate and the bigger shops in the town centre.
Dacorum's council area recorded fine-particle pollution of about 7.3 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024, a borough-wide average that blends Hemel's main roads with the fields around Great Gaddesden and Nettleden.
The town has three very different parts. The Old Town keeps the Norman church and the high street, the post-war neighbourhoods like Adeyfield, Grovehill and Chaulden spread up the valley sides, and Piccotts End, Felden and Bourne End are close enough to belong to Hemel while still feeling like villages. Most of Hemel is post-war, but walk ten minutes in almost any direction and it gets older or greener.
Hemel's homes also have their own gardens, about 105,000 square metres of private garden for every 1,000 residents. The new town planners built houses with front and back gardens, and the town still has them. Many of the flats don't, so ask what outdoor space comes with a flat.
The non-domestic rating list holds 2,329 premises. Offices are the biggest category at 560, followed by shops and then 206 warehouses, with industrial units further down. Those counts are premises on the valuation list, which is not the same as businesses trading today. The first factory went up on Maylands Avenue in 1950, and the rating list still shows a town where plenty of people work as well as sleep.
Of the 517 food outlets with a hygiene rating, about 74% hold the top score and about 2% sit at the bottom of the scale. Hemel's takeaways and cafés are, on the whole, clean.
No protected-landscape designation overlaps the area. There is no area of outstanding natural beauty, no site of special scientific interest and no ancient woodland inside the boundary. Hemel's green space is mostly parks, commons and riverbanks, kept that way by the trusts, councils and planners who look after them.
The surroundings are one of Hemel's real strengths. Few towns of its size have this much green space and water this close to so many front doors.