Few neighborhoods can match the balance of suburban beauty, peacefulness, and walkability of Toluca Lake CA. But there’s a hidden layer of beauty behind these pleasant facades: pristinely manicured backyard spaces, sparkling swimming pools, and outdoor recreation areas that take advantage of the year-round generous sunshine. While homes across the Greater Los Angeles area tend to give previews of outdoor living arrangements with landscaped front yards and street-side patios exuding curb appeal, Toluca Lake homes are often more closed off. It’s an intentional result of historical planning, lot design, community character, and homeowner preferences.
Privacy is All Part of the Plan
By their very definition, backyards are at least partially obscured from street traffic. But in the neighborhood of Toluca Lake CA, it’s rare even to catch a glimpse at what’s happening behind its beautiful homes. This is perhaps best exemplified in the appropriately named Hidden Village enclave, one of the community’s earliest developed areas. Hidden Village took inspiration from classic country estates rather than standard American suburbs.
Nearly a century ago, when developers were plotting Hidden Village, they drew up parcels with significant setbacks, minimal street clutter (bypassing sidewalks, curbs, and even street lights), and significant gaps between homes. Seclusion was baked into the development. Many of these lot sizes range from 11,000 square feet to nearly an acre, much larger than the LA standard. But this allowed Toluca Lake homeowners to push living areas even further out of the eye of the public. Today, nearly 100 years later, this planning continues to influence the way yards relate to streetscapes.
Landscaping Love
Landscaping plays a more critical role in Toluca Lake’s character than it does in most other LA neighborhoods. Streets are frequently lined with looming oaks, ancient sycamores, and privacy-promoting hedges, and homeowners tend to add to these suburban “forests” with their own landscaping. Strategically placed shrubs, hedges, and trees serve to block sightlines and facilitate a sense of retreat without the need for towering perimeter fences or stucco walls. This focus on landscaping makes more sense when you realize that Toluca Lake was once agricultural land, noted for its walnuts and peaches, amongst other crops.
Homeowner Hideaways
Homeowner preference obviously factors strongly into the hidden backyards of Toluca Lake. With entertainment industry professionals and families alike prioritizing privacy in their outdoor recreation, backyards are typically well protected from wandering eyes. You’ll see this preference reflected in landscaping choices, hedge placement, and gated driveways. Homes in other parts of the city are more likely to use front yards as public-facing extensions of a home’s character, almost seeming to interact with passersby. But Toluca Lake’s residential street traffic is often limited to locals, further contributing to the favor for insular designs over external presentation.
Toluca Lake CA is a Neighborhood – and a Literal Lake
Toluca Lake is more than a community name. There’s a literal six-acre private lake situated within the neighborhood, but you’d be forgiven for missing it. That’s because it’s only accessible to lakeside property owners and cannot be seen from public streets. The lake abuts an equally private golf course. And unless you’re a lakeside homeowner or a guest of one, you’ll probably never see this placid backyard beauty. Pretty on brand for Toluca Lake, actually.
The Spirit of Toluca Lake
Toluca Lake CA doesn’t need meticulously manicured front yards to remain one of the most in-demand neighborhoods in Los Angeles. If anything, it’s likely more enticing to interested buyers to know that many of these homes mask a private paradise garden retreat in a backyard unseen by the general public. Offering a winning blend of function, beauty, and privacy, the secret backyards of Toluca Lake’s suburbs are a limited luxury that goes against the grain of the typical LA living experience.
With a brand that says as much as JohnHart’s, Senior Copywriter Seth Styles never finds himself at a loss for words. Responsible for maintaining the voice of the company, he spends each day drafting marketing materials, blogs, bios, and agent resources that speak from the company’s collective mind and Hart… errr, heart.
Having spent over a decade in creative roles across a variety of industries, Seth brings with him vast experience in SEO practices, digital marketing, and all manner of professional writing with particular strength in blogging, content creation, and brand building. Gratitude, passion, and sincerity remain core tenets of his unwavering work ethic. The landscape of the industry changes daily, paralleling JohnHart’s efforts to {re}define real estate, but Seth works to maintain the company’s consistent message while offering both agents and clients a new echelon of service.
When not preserving the JohnHart essence in stirring copy, Seth puts his efforts into writing and illustrating an ongoing series entitled The Death of Romance. In addition, he adores spending quality time with his girlfriend and Romeo (his long-haired chihuahua mix), watching ‘70s and ‘80s horror movies, and reading (with a particular penchant for Victorian horror novels and authors Yukio Mishima and Bret Easton Ellis). He also occasionally records music as the vocalist and songwriter for his glam rock band, Peppermint Pumpkin.
