10 Famous Yards to Get You Excited For Summer | Open Door Remix | Architectural Digest

I think I like my house because most of the areas are my favorite areas. This is my actual, actual favorite part of the house. When there's guests over, this is inevitably where we always end up hanging out by the fire. Let's go for a swim. You ready? We're outside. I feel like I've said this a hundred times. I think I like my house because most of the areas are my favorite areas. This is one of my favorite areas. I stay in this pool for minimum six hours at a time on the weekend. You know, when you went into a baby pool where like it was just filled with piss. That's exactly the temperature I like to keep this at. We always have parties, we're barbecuing, we're grilling. We're constantly in a flow of like pool, jacuzzi, sauna, cold plunge if you're not scared. I'm scared a lot. Everybody's all into the cold plunge now. You're not a professional athlete like getting in a cold plunge for like six minutes a day, like isn't going to help you write like 12 emails faster, like relax. It's freezing. Nobody likes it. I get in every once in a while if I'm really hung over. Over there, that's like my personal oasis. That's where I like to have all my meals, even if there's not enough seats and we have like 15 people, we're all crowded around there. We're eating. My favorite place, though, besides that to eat is I usually feed everyone while they're in the pool and everyone like lines up on this area. But we're trying to be a little bit civilized. We go over there. This is where it goes down, guys. We have a pizza oven. We love making pizza. We love doing like Middle Eastern nights. We're making like pitas and also like Indian nights with naan. And everyone will gather around here and we'll all put the pizzas in together, take them out. Honestly, it's just different places in my house for people to gather around and eat. Isn't that what life's all about? Basically, a few years ago, my friend Scott and I started putting together a garden. I wanted to eat like what I grew. And in the time that we did that, we're always giving back and finding ways to do cool things with interesting charities. And my friend Maggie Baird has a charity called Support and Feed. We linked up and we basically deliver all the vegetables from my gardens to different food deserts in the L.A. area. We do it every single week and we get to feed people who are less fortunate and don't have access to like incredible, healthy, fresh vegetables. So here we are in the backyard, and this is kind of the most special part of our house and also the part that needed the most work. When we found this house, we fell in love with everything. This place is perfect. And then we walked through into the backyard and it was not great. This whole piece back here was just sort of this very rough concrete. It just was like so not as beautiful. It made us think twice about maybe doing this. Eventually we said, let's go. But we knew that this was going to be like the bulk of the work that we wanted to do. And there was one man, Sean Femwright, him and his team came in and just completely transformed this. He gave us this incredible fire pit and seating area. But most importantly, what he gave us were these two olive trees. He told us that he really felt that we needed like more shape to the garden and he needed these trees back here. We didn't understand how he was going to get them up here. And he told us that he was going to crane them in. I've never heard of craning a tree, but he organized the whole thing. And we're really happy that we invested in it. During the day, we get some good shade. And at night, it just creates this like, it's like you're in a cove back here. We've got these beautiful lights in the tree. I want this garden to look like great expectations. I want like Miss Havisham vibes. I want everything overgrown and just like above you, plants coming in. I want you to have to like duck to get through the plants. And he brought in all of these different ivies. And he just told us that the longer we stayed in the house, the longer we loved the house, the more this ivy would grow and grow and grow. And spring and summer, that just becomes all green. And it's my favorite part of the house. It's really beautiful. So here we are at the pool. This is the furthest back part of the house. Highest up in the backyard. This was the most recent addition. I think it was in like 1972. And so there's a part of it that also doesn't feel quite like the rest of the house. And everything that we've done here is trying to make sure that we update it, but also feels like a part of the original house. We struggled to figure out what to do specifically with what's behind you. When we bought the house, there was just this very rickety structure that was basically the same shape as this, but it didn't go as far as it would. So it was like turn this into a really formal lounge space so that the pool days felt like you had a place to come in out of the sun. We love this light. This is an important part of it. Original Moroccan piece. It creates the most beautiful pattern up here. This area is exactly what we wanted it to be. We wanted people to come up here, kids to be able to swim in the pool, and for you to just spend the whole day out here. And it really does from like sunup to sundown. I like that feeling when our friends come over and they feel like our house is a vacation for them. We wanted the back garden area to have space for people and parties and pool and possibly even do shows. You know, if we put a little slab up over the jacuzzi, we could have chairs out here and have a show up there or project a movie up there. It's all about being able to stay in one place and enjoy where we are. Also, if you see at the very top of this hill, there is a structure where you could do yoga or meditate or just welcome the sunshine with a cup of coffee. Really comfortable, not fussy, easy breezy, but it's also pretty decadent. It's very Pompeii. When there's guests over, this is inevitably where we always end up hanging out by the fire. Gorgeous view of Hollywood. The Hollywood sign is like right over there. The design is a tree house. I love how much greenery there is, all the vines and, you know, the olive trees. At night, it is so stunning with the fire going and like the lights and the houses on the hills. Very, very beautiful. The beautiful thing is that this wraps around the entire house, this kind of patio. So we like to have fun little dinners out here, get candles out here. I love this cactus. This is the barbecue, or as in South Africa, I would call it the braai. We oftentimes will have big barbecues here, eat out here, end up at the fire pit. Y'all should come. It's a fun time. It's a nice time to hang out here. So this is one of my favorite aspects of the house. What really sold it for me was this amazing winding sort of, I mean, it almost feels tropical back here. There's so much lush greenery and plant life back here. I was just obsessed with it the second I saw it. So this is the first little platform up here. When we've had big parties and big functions, inevitably everyone starts wandering through the garden, end up sitting around here, hanging out. There's this very old-timey stove here. So if you want to like, I don't know, cook beans in a can and like you can do that over here if you want. I have a little hammock right here. For those that don't know what a hammock is, it's the thing you sit in like this. So you can just relax in here, look up at the giant Strelitzia. And if you really want to like, you know, disappear, I'm sort of known for covering my face. So, you know, whatever. This is sort of the little adventure over here. These trails go all the way around. So we got jade over here. This is a guava tree, which has yet to fruit, but I'm hoping. And it takes you all the way back around to the other side of the house. And then obviously it's kind of cute because you can like see into the studio, wave to people. I live alone. So if I was waving to someone, I'd probably be worried. I spend quite a lot of time out here. On a nice day, if it's cool enough, I'll throw on some Birkenstocks and come back here and do like a lot of gardening. And I like to prune and trim. I mean, I have gardeners as well, but I like to do a lot of it myself because obviously it's just a hobby of mine. This is the interior courtyard. It's pure magic. I absolutely love this internal courtyard because it connects our entire home. And you got to check out this olive tree because this olive tree in the center of this courtyard is what really sold me on this house. There's this incredible little lounge area. And when we first visited the home, it was set up as a dining area. And about a week later, I saw this 20-piece sectional with this carved wood inside, fell in love. And look at the way it fits in there. I didn't even know that's where it was going to go, but it fit there like it was meant to be. And I got to take you down to visit one more spot. Let's go for a swim. You ready? Welcome to our pool area. We redid this entire area. It was already beautiful, but we just wanted to put our spin on it. We put in traditional Spanish tile because there was originally Spanish tile here. Unfortunately, we couldn't salvage it. So we added something that had a very similar feeling. And then we decked out this area with a lot of fun drought-tolerant plants. And there are quite a few pieces out here that are from some of my different lines. Again, mixing high and low and just creating a very vibrant, fun, colorful atmosphere. Summer is upon us. And if you're looking for me, this is where you'll find me. Welcome to Jamaica. This is my place right here. This is the farm, but the house is up on top of the hill. Let's go check it out. We got a bunch of horses on the property. This one's called Rockabye. It was our first horse. Plus, Jamaica has a really, really deep horse culture. A lot of polo riders here. A lot of horse racing here. And a lot of horses ride on the beach. We grow a lot of bananas here. A lot of pineapples. A lot of sweet potatoes, sorrel, jackfruit. We have another horse named Lil Wes. And his dad is here. His name is Megan the Stallion. This is our main dining table. This is where we all eat. Everything is open air. That's what I love about Jamaica. And this pool, this infinity pool, just kind of like hovers over the jungle. Like when you get in the pool, you just have a view of this amazing little valley right here on my farm. And it really is like the heart of the whole house, where everybody can meet, they can eat, they can party, they can swim, they can relax. And all the bedrooms kind of flow into this area. And I love that. Do a little backflip for you guys. I didn't die. Oh, I forgot my phone's in my pocket. I'm joking. Follow me to the cannon. I want to show you something special. When we were first constructing this property, excavating, we found this old cannon from the British Empire. So we just dug it up and positioned it right here. There's a real cannon right here. Not many people have one of these. This is my backyard. And what I love about my backyard is it's still so colorful. You've got the yellow umbrellas. You've got really cool seating areas. You have the bar and grill. But I think my favorite part of the backyard is actually my squirrels that I feed. And they're right here. That's Teddy. And that's also Teddy. I named them all Teddy because I can't tell the difference. They'll actually come up to me and eat out of my hand. This is my in-ground trampoline. I love jumping on the trampoline. And I wanted one in my backyard, but I didn't want the netting to look tacky. So I put it in the ground. I would jump on the trampoline, but I'm not wearing a bra. So that's not happening. This is my actual, actual favorite part of the house. I think this is the reason why I fell in love with it in the first place. You can fold away these doors and then there's this courtyard. It's just like actual heaven to me. Again, you can see like the LA, California influence. But then we've also got like a lot of Japanese stuff. This is called the Swamp Cypress. There's little fishies in here somewhere. I don't know if you can see them. And then we've got like native Australian, like doesn't get much more Australian than this. Or like the big eucalyptus tree. It's just like paradise for me. I spend a lot of time out here watering the garden, looking after the plants. So because we took the toilet out of the kitchen, we needed another toilet downstairs. And so I was like, what if we create this like fantasy, like outdoor toilet situation? So this used to be a wine cellar and now it's this. I went to one of those bathrooms where, you know, when you go to a restaurant and people are like, oh, have you been to the toilet? You have to go to the toilet. Just kind of lent into the fantasy and lent into like a little bit of surrealism. The walls are all curved. So it's kind of like a cave. I think the color is called oxblood. Yeah, I'm just obsessed with it. It smells really good. The sonos is tucked away. Sometimes I make it feel like a rave in here. Like if it's all quiet in the house or whatever, and you come in, it's like while you're peeing. Obsessed. I think it's so dramatic and extra and I love it. One more thing I want to show you. I'm getting my phone so that I don't mess up. Basically, the history of this house was in 1874. This was a handball court. So 146 years ago, this was a handball court. And then it was turned into a brick factory throughout all of the multiple renovations that this place has been through. One thing remained. If you look really close, you can see two handsome men playing handball in a court. And then there's this like weird sort of spear thing on the side. And then you walk over here and it's the same buddy spear. I really love the idea that this house has had so many lives and been through just so much and seen so much. I'm only 25 and this house is like 146 years old. So I'm really, really, really proud and super, super, super grateful to be able to live here and call it home. This is my little slice of heaven. I designed this half moon fireplace because I wanted to sit around here and just look at the view. The view in the summer is amazing. There's cattle that comes down and they walk into the river and drink water. And it's beautiful. I love having just a casual dinner here. We sit, we use it as a table and just look at this magnificent view. I built a house in Mexico for my children years, 20 years ago. But I had done these beautiful carpets in stone. So I wanted to recreate this here. As you see, it's a stone carpet with little flowers. And that's the stuff I love to do. I just sat here with my knees on a pillow and just laid these little rocks. And that's the creative part of building a house that I really love is I'm hands on. I've been on the job site every day, building this house, working with my incredible crew from Texas. And it was a beautiful experience. We are on a outside patio. This is the anchor to the house. It's like another living space. So, you know, when we moved here, we didn't have this beautiful pergola that's above us. And so we put this pergola in. I wanted to create a space very much like the secret garden. That was a book I think I read dozens of times when I was a kid. And it was a place that for me was just otherworldly. The whole landscaping and greenery thing came about because when we first moved here, we needed to have more privacy. And we love the pergola because we love Italy. Of course, that's another one of our favorite places. And we love the vines growing down the columns. We have a water feature right there because just the sound of water. I'm very much aromatherapy, sound therapy person. And it's conducive to relaxation. And you see the big television. So my husband can watch his football games back here. I always have a place to go to. Even in the secret garden. This is where we entertain. I know we say we entertain in the kitchen, the living room. We're entertainers. It's everywhere. But outside. That's the great thing about the house. You have a lot of different places where we can entertain. We have a fireplace over here with heat. So you can literally stay out here at night when it's cool and still be cozy. No matter where you're sitting. Near the pool, jacuzzi, our favorite place. We're in that jacuzzi first thing in the morning and last thing at night. When it comes to the pool and jacuzzi, we're more jacuzzi. Yes. And Genesis will pull us into the pool. Yes. Because she loves us into the pool. Yes.