England. Welwyn Garden City is also referred to in Council parlance as WGC or, less correctly, as "Welwyn" (the village of Welwyn is actually located a few miles northwest of WGC).

Welwyn Garden City is well-known as the town where breakfast cereals Shredded Wheat and Shreddies were made, at the former Nabisco factory (now part of Nestlé). The factory closed (with production moved to Staverton, Wiltshire) in 2008. Nestlé said that the current site was too small. The former supermarket chain Fine Fare (now part of Somerfield) had its head office in the town at one time, as did ICI's Plastics Division until the early 1990s.

Tesco has a substantial head office site in the north of the town (the company's main headquarters are in Cheshunt), and a full-size supermarket mock-up used for staff training. Recent local news indicates that Tesco has bought the Shredded Wheat site to build a currently unknown development. They have however confirmed that no new super stores will be built on the site.

In 1929 Sir Henry Birkin built the first supercharged "Blower Bentley" at his engineering works in Broadwater Road, Welwyn Garden City. His famous record breaking red single seater Blower Bentley was also built and maintained at the works and took the Brooklands lap record to 137.96 mph in 1932 with Birkin at the wheel. The record stood for another two years before being beaten by John Cobb in his Napier Railton.

Welwyn Garden City retains a strong commercial base bringing much employment to the area with companies including: Argos Direct, Baxter, British Lead Mills, Carl Zeiss, Danish Bacon (DBC foodservice), Roche, IBM, PayPoint, Ratcliff Tail Lifts (now Ratcliff Palfinger), Schering-Plough, Threshers Group, Vega Group, Welwyn Tool Group (former Welwyn Tool Company), Xerox and many more.

The police headquarters for Hertfordshire Constabulary is located on the southern side of the town. The Constabulary's new 45m-high radio mast in the centre of the Parkway vista, erected contrary to Government and English Heritage guidelines, has been heavily criticized by heritage groups.

The principal historic significance of the town lies in its planning. It is an example of the physical, social and cultural ideals of the periods in which it was conceived (it has the unique distinction of being both a garden city and a new town). In planning terms its significance is global, attracting visitors from around the world.

Welwyn Garden City, as its name suggests, is a garden city, founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the 1920s following his previous experiment in Letchworth Garden City, and designed by Louis de Soissons. Following the establishment of Letchworth Garden City and prior to the commencement of Welwyn Garden City, Howard wrote:

A city will arise as superior in its beauty and magnificence to our first crude attempt as the finished canvas of a great artist to the rough and untaught attempts of a schoolboy.

Howard (nicknamed by close friend George Bernard Shaw as Ebenezer the Garden City Geyser, in recognition of his continual 'spouting forth' on the advantages of Garden City living) had called for the creation of new towns - of limited size, planned in advance and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land - as a role model for lower-density urban development. Howard believed that such Garden Cities were the perfect blend of city and nature. The town has its own exclusive environmental protection legislation - The Scheme of Management for Welwyn Garden City.

The town centre is dominated by the central mall or 'scenic parkway', almost a mile long, named 'Parkway'. Prior to the erection of a police radio mast, the Parkway vista to the south viewed from the White Bridge had been described as one of the world's finest urban vistas

The main shopping centre is known as The Howard Centre, after Sir Ebenezer Howard.Welwyn Garden City railway station also forms part of the centre.

One of the lesser-known ideas of the city's architects was that all the town's citizens would shop in the same store. Thus the Welwyn department store was established as a central landmark on the 'Campus' (a centrally-located green semi-circular area in the town). Commercial pressures have since ensured much more competition and variety, and the Welwyn Store is now part of the John Lewis Partnership group of stores (the original Welwyn Store was on the site of the current Rosanne House office building).

Until a mistake in 2005, there were no street names with the word "street" in the town Ebenezer Howard is said to have planted an apple tree in the garden of every original house