The longtime Northwest editor of Sunset magazine shares her Hunts Point garden with two cats and dog Buster.

"I moved in the first time right after I got married," says Short, when she and her husband rented for $25 a month; a few years later they bought the place for $3,800. Some of the original grand cedar trees still stand, but old apple trees and native dogwoods have been removed and the meadows replaced by paths, beds and borders.

Now a curve of gravel drive leads down into the long, narrow, 60-by-600-foot garden that runs at a gentle slope from the road to Lake Washington. On one side, a woodland rises up, shading the drive with evergreens, vine maple and thickets of salal. On the left, the ground falls off to a large sunken pond, half hidden by the near-monstrous, lily-pad-shaped leaves of a healthy stand of Petasites japonicus. Here is the naturalistic Northwest garden you might expect, as well as a hint of something more unusual.

Bergenia flowers on tall stems in front of the golden-leafed shrub Lonicera nitida 'Baggesen's Gold,' with blue-flowering lungwort edging the deck.

With an emphasis on native plants, influences from friends, various plant enthusiasms and a recent remodel, Short's garden remains an intensely personal space, oozing a sense of the care and attention it has received for more than half a century. "Every landscape architect in town has looked at this place - I was working with all these people at one time or another," says Short. Such well-known designers and landscape architects as Keith Geller, Glen Hunt, Bob Chittock, Glen Withey and Charles Price have worked or advised on the garden. But the aesthetic remains plant-centered, clean-lined and straightforward, as befits the several-times-remodeled summer cabin which is now an art-filled, book-lined house.

In 1990, Bainbridge Island architect Jim Cutler added a bedroom and bath on the main floor, and raised the roof to make room for an upstairs study. The big bank of wood-paned windows looking out to the water remains, as does the feeling of a cozy hideaway nestled into the landscape.

A highlight of Short's garden is the shady gravel patio alongside the front walkway, featuring a moss table planted by famed gardener George Schenk.

Short has long favored native plants, but isn't a purist, mixing them freely with ornamentals. "This works for me because I'm not a terribly neat or precise gardener," she explains. Sword ferns help blend the edges of the cultivated beds into the surrounding woodlands, where they're mixed with non-natives such as primroses, daffodils and corydalis for early color.

Short especially loves blue in the garden, planting native California lilac (Ceanothus), an evergreen shrub with bright blue May flowers, in several spots in the garden, and at least 10 different kinds of lungwort (Pulmonaria) with its variously toned blue flowers that bloom in March and April. Short particularly admires Pulmonaria 'Benediction' for its flowers of electric blue.

The woodland garden holds a mixture of early-blooming plants, including several kinds of hellebores, ferns, primroses epimedium and the lacy Corydalis flexuosa 'Blue Panda,' in full bloom in April.

Hosta 'Gold Standard' and Corydalis lutea are stars of the shady woodland garden in late April.

When several old apple trees between road and house were removed, Short discovered enough sun for a new vegetable garden. Marked by an entry trellis designed to hold zucchini vines, raised beds take full advantage of the sunshine, holding peas, radishes, beans, chrysanthemums and nasturtiums. Another sunny spot holds "gray things" such as cardoons and lamb's ears, set off by the chartreuse of various euphorbias. The other beds alongside the drive hold early-blossoming plants, such as Oregon grape and Edgeworthia chrysantha, as well as shade lovers including trillium, sarcoccoca, bergenia, Japanese maple, astilbe, hellebores and plenty of Epimedium pinnatum subsp. colchicum, which Short especially admires for its large, glossy leaves and delicate yellow flowers.

The walkway to the front door is defined on one side by a lattice-faced garage wall, planted with the tracery of climbing hydrangea, a pattern that will be obscured by hundreds of white lace caps later in the season. On the April afternoon I visited, the rich perfume of a Daphne odora 'Aureo-marginata' planted next to the door coaxed me toward the front porch. One of the largest Styrax obassias I've ever seen spreads its branches above the entry, a fine example of the pleasures of gardening in the same spot for many years. Short planted this fragrant snowbell tree when it was only 3 feet tall, she says, noting, "I could have started a nursery from it - I've potted up more than 300 seedlings just from that tree."

As for the entry, it may take awhile to reach the front door because it's impossible not to be lured into the small sunken garden alongside the walkway - a space so atmospheric it seems to emanate its own force field. A few steps down from the walk, a rectangular patio is floored with gravel, flanked in simple wooden benches, and surrounded by ferns, hosta and big old rhododendrons. The trunks of tall maples give a rhythm to the space, as well as shade and privacy from the neighbors.

Nancy Davidson Short has taken full advantage of a new sunny spot opened up when she removed a couple of old apple trees. Here she grows vegetables and flowers; a trellis supports zucchini vines later in the summer. The pond and big leaves of Petasites japonicus are in the background.

The lattice fence matches the grid of squares on the garage. And in the center of the gravel is the surprise of a table mounded with a soft blanket of moss and tiny ferns. This lovely curiosity was created two years ago by George Schenk, a close friend of Short's and author of "The Complete Shade Gardener" and "Moss Gardening." Now a piece of green art, it started out as an old cedar picnic table with cast-iron frame. Schenk simply mounded dirt on top, and planted it thickly with native mosses, tiny ferns, species daffodils, miniature astilbes and epimediums.

Once you're able to tear yourself away from the charm of the entry and follow the path around the house to the water side, the property takes on a different feel from the woodsy and naturalistic streetside garden. Two long, sloping borders, stretching nearly 60 feet from house to lake, are designed to be at their peak in mid-summer when this waterfront part of the garden is most used. These borders have been revamped over the past three years by Jim Fox, an Alaska transplant who has gardened for Short for several years. An admirer of British gardener Christopher Lloyd's brilliant color schemes and use of flamboyant foliage, Fox has planted what he and Short call the "Gosh Border," for the exclamation people make when they first see it. Shrubs and perennials fill the space with shades of brilliant yellow and bright purple, magenta, orange and crimson. Designed to be viewed from the house above as well as from the dock, this bold mix of unusual plants stands out in lively contrast to the lawn and evergreen trees that surround it.

An artful mix of plantings leads you along the walkway, where many springtime greens offset the orange-brown blades of the ornamental grass Carex buchananii, the spikes of a dark phormium and the burgundy, heart-shaped leaves of the small tree Cercis canadenis 'Forest Pansy.'

Short points out that while these colors appear in artfully composed echoes and gradations, they are based on nature's own color schemes and are similar to the mix of bright flowers that bloom all together on Mount Rainier in late July and August. Tropicals and flamboyant foliage plants fill the sunny hot border; the shadier parts are planted in blues, grays, soft pinks and cream to lighten the darker areas of the garden. "We took everything out and started over so that Jim could do it his own way - I wanted him to have fun with it," says Short. Despite their complexity, Fox claims these borders are low-maintenance when properly cared for. Just mulch deeply between New Year's and Valentine's Day, and don't let a single weed go to seed, he advises.

The new and the old mingle gracefully in Short's garden. Trees have come down, the cedars have grown up, plants have been added and torn out. "The garden has changed and so have I changed," Short concludes. Yet the garden seamlessly incorporates Fox's new, exuberant plantings and Short's enthusiasm for mixing natives with ornamentals - all the while harboring a past that stretches back before Short's 62-year tenure. According to family legend, Short's great-grandmother brought a favorite moss rose with her from Iowa when she came West in the 1890s. This deep red, sweetly fragrant rose still blooms each summer in Short's lakeside garden.

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. She is the co-author of "Artists in Their Gardens" from Sasquatch Books. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com. Jacqueline Koch is a free-lance photographer who lives on Whidbey Island.