Raising the Pool in This Actress’s L.A. Backyard Unlocked Her Personal Oasis
Photography by Jessica Alexander
The way actress Stephanie Beatriz and her husband Brad Hoss tell the story, their backyard came to be the way a lot of projects start these days: social media. They had recently purchased a 1921 home on the Eastside of Los Angeles about a century after it had been built, and wanted to give the roughed-up bungalow a fresh chapter—including the outdoor space. “We were really excited when we saw the backyard, because even though there was an existing ADU and a shed, there was still a lot of space,” Beatriz says. “We knew we wanted to expand the home’s footprint and do something special with what was left.”
Beatriz had found landscape designer Denise Staffa of Outside In on Instagram and liked how she created al fresco living areas that felt tailored to each of her clients. So, Beatriz wrote to Staffa asking if she’d be interested in renovating her own dirt patch. At first, Staffa wasn’t so sure. “I remember reading her email and thinking it was a scam,” Staffa says, laughing. “I thought, Stephanie Beatriz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine is emailing me, a little designer in Western Australia? No way.”
