Garston, Hertfordshire

Garston is a village in Hertfordshire, England. Garston is contiguous with Watford and now, despite retaining a local identity, is effectively a suburb. It is within the Stanborough, Woodside and Meriden wards of the borough of Watford, although a small number of its streets are in Hertsmere.

Watford's main out-of-town leisure park, Woodside Leisure Park, is in Garston on the A405 Kingsway road. It features a Vue cinema, Hollywood Bowl 10-pin bowling lane, two restaurants -- Chiquito, Frankie & Benny's and Gambado , an indoor children's activity and softplay centre. This is situated on the site of the old Golf Range. About half of Garston Park is a Local Nature Reserve.

Garston is home to the British Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and the West Herts Crematorium at Garston is the principal facility for non-burial funerals in the West Hertfordshire area, serving Watford, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is on Bucknalls Lane, Garston, just on the border with Bricket Wood.

Garston is home to several large secondary schools serving the broader Watford area. The largest of these are St. Michael's Catholic High School, Parmiter's School which Queen Elizabeth II officially opened in 1981, and Francis Combe Academy.

Churches of several denominations serve the Garston area. All Saints serves the Anglican populace and Our Lady and St. Michael serves the Roman Catholic population. The church of the Nazarene on Woodside serves the Watford area with one of the countries' largest Nazarene churches.

It also has its own railway station, as well as an Arriva bus garage.

Before its development in the 1940s to 1960s, Garston House stood just off of what is now Garston Lane.

Garston Park Parade shops sit on the corner of St Albans Road and Garston Lane. This shopping centre adjoins the bus garage and was built in the 1950s. Other shops in the area include a parade on the Meriden estate and the Kingswood estate, numerous shops along St Albans Road, and a few at the junction of the A405 by the Three Horseshoes Pub.

St Albans Road, Garston used to be home to Henleys Garage and Truck King. That site is now home to McDonald's, which was one of the first drive-thru units in the UK. Further along St Albans Road is a franchise of TGI Fridays, when that site was built in the 1980s, it was originally developed in a similar America diner style under the name Calendars. Before that, it was the Crown pub; whose presence was the root of the naming for the road Crown Rise.

Towards the west of Garston is the main A41 trunk road from London which intersects St Albans Road at what is known as the Dome Roundabout. In 2016 this site is home to a Sainsbury's and an ASDA supermarket both with Petrol Stations, a Pizza Hut restaurant, numerous small shops within the Asda site, a take away and a Shell Petrol Station with a Waitrose shop inside. Previously this roundabout was home to the Bungalow Stores, an independent car dealership, gas holder and gas showroom, a Mobil petrol station and Odeon Motors, a circular car showroom overlooking the roundabout from that current Shell location. Odeon was demolished in the late 70s to make way for Shell, which was the widest petrol station forecourt in Europe on its opening.

Just off the Dome roundabout is the imposing clock tower of the Odhams printing works (in 2016 this site is owned by the Mirror group).