Landscaping, Fencing & Groundworks in Hemel Hempstead
BMS Building works across Hemel Hempstead on garden landscaping, fencing, artificial grass, driveways, paving and groundworks, from a base in Watford about twenty minutes away. Perry Niven quotes every job after seeing it, and the price agreed at the start is the price at the end.
Working in Hemel Hempstead
Hemel Hempstead is roughly twenty minutes from Watford, where BMS Building is based, straight up the A41, and it is a town where the job is usually easier to reach than the equivalent job in an older town. Work runs across the new town estates, Adeyfield, Bennetts End, Grovehill, Warners End, Highfield and Leverstock Green, out to Boxmoor and Felden and down into the Old Town. Most properties have their own off-street space and a frontage wide enough for a grab lorry or a skip, so muck-away and deliveries are rarely the constraint they are in St Albans. What does need planning is the ground: the town is built on the sides of the Gade and Bulbourne valleys, so many plots slope, and a garden that falls away changes what a patio, a drive or a run of fencing actually involves before anything is priced. Every job is quoted after a site visit by Perry Niven, with the levels measured rather than estimated from a photograph.
Hemel Hempstead is about twenty minutes from Watford, where BMS Building is based, and it is a town where the work tends to be decided by the ground rather than by the access.
What we do in Hemel Hempstead
Garden landscaping and fencing are the two largest parts of the work here, with artificial grass close behind. Alongside those run driveways in block paving and resin, paving for paths, steps and edging, patios, groundworks for extensions and porches, and brickwork for garden and retaining walls.
Some of those are not big enough markets in this town to justify a page of their own, and they are still work we do: resin driveways, patios and brickwork in Hemel Hempstead are all quoted the same way as everything else, from a site visit.
The slope is the thing to design for
The town is built on the sides of the Gade and Bulbourne valleys, and many plots sit on a real gradient. A patio or a driveway that has to be level on ground that is not means retaining the difference somewhere, and putting the water somewhere it can go.
That is a design decision made with a tape measure on site, not a detail to sort out once the slabs have arrived. It is also why two gardens the same size in the same town can be genuinely different jobs.
New town estates, and what is actually under the front garden
Hemel was designated a new town in 1947, and most of it went up from 1949 into the 1970s in planned neighbourhoods, each with its own layout.
A house of that age has usually had its drive and its drainage altered at least once since. What is under a front garden is frequently not what the original layout says it should be, which is why the build-up is checked rather than assumed.
The Old Town is the exception
The Old Town, north of the town centre, is the town that was there before the new town, and it is a conservation area. That does not, on its own, change the national permitted development rules for hard surfaces, walls and fences. An Article 4 direction or a planning condition can, and in a conservation area taking down a wall, fence or gate can need permission.
Dacorum Borough Council is the planning authority for the borough. Check your address with them before anything is agreed.
Recent work in Hemel Hempstead
In Hemel Hempstead, BMS Building closed in an open corner garden with new close board fencing and a matching gate, giving the house privacy and security on the road side with very little upkeep.
What Hemel Hempstead properties are like
Hemel Hempstead was designated a new town in 1947, and most of its housing went up in planned neighbourhoods from 1949 into the 1970s: Adeyfield, Bennetts End, Chaulden, Warners End, Gadebridge, Highfield, Grovehill and, last, Woodhall Farm. The neighbourhoods were set on the valley sides and the higher ground either side of the Gade and the Bulbourne, which is why so many gardens slope. Fencing enquiries here are more often about the rear and side boundaries than the front, and where somebody does want a front boundary it is worth checking the deeds for any covenant before assuming it is a free choice. A house of that age has usually had its drive and its drainage altered at least once, so what is under a front garden is frequently not what the original plan says. The Old Town, north of the town centre, is older than the new town around it and is a conservation area. Being in a conservation area does not, on its own, change the national permitted development rules for a front garden surface or for the height of a fence or wall: an Article 4 direction or a planning condition can. Dacorum Borough Council is the planning authority for the whole borough: https://www.dacorum.gov.uk. The British Geological Survey maps the town as chalk, with clay-with-flints over much of the higher ground and river deposits along the valley floors, and on a sloping plot drainage is the thing to design for rather than the thing to discover.
Hemel Hempstead questions
How far is Hemel Hempstead from your base?
- About twenty minutes from Watford, where BMS Building is based, straight up the A41. It is close enough for a site visit to be arranged within the working week rather than weeks out. What decides a start date is the work already booked, not the distance, and you will be given a realistic one in writing.
My garden slopes. Does that change what a patio or driveway costs?
- It changes what the job is, so yes, it can. A level surface on sloping ground means either cutting into the slope and retaining it, or building up and retaining it, and either way there is a wall or a step arrangement holding the level and drainage designed to take the water somewhere sensible. That is real work and it is priced honestly rather than discovered halfway through. It is measured at the site visit, which is why the visit happens before the price.
Can you fence the front garden on a new town estate?
- Often, but it is worth checking first rather than after. Deeds can carry covenants about front boundaries, and those are separate from planning permission. Planning has its own rule too: one metre is the permitted height next to a highway used by vehicles, two metres elsewhere. We will tell you what the planning rule says. Your deeds are the other half of the answer.
Which parts of Hemel Hempstead do you cover?
- All of it, and the surrounding villages. Adeyfield, Bennetts End, Grovehill, Warners End, Highfield, Leverstock Green, Boxmoor, Felden, the Old Town, and out towards Berkhamsted and Kings Langley. If you are on the edge and unsure, ask.
What we do in Hemel Hempstead
We also cover Berkhamsted, Kings Langley, Boxmoor, Leverstock Green and Bovingdon from the same base.