Despite extensive renovation, the Chaplins' garden retains its original feel of sweeping lawn and venerable trees. Christopher Chaplin plays on a tire swing with friend Justin, swinging above a patch of April daffodils.

Dawn and David Chaplin, she a garden designer and he a Brit with an interest in growing edibles, have over the past decade transformed the old property into a garden that reflects their own tastes and enthusiasms while continuing to meld beautifully into the neighborhood. The large trees still shade the old house as well as the garden, but they have been been pruned up to show off their trunks and allow in more light for the benefit of a wide assortment of spring and summer bloomers.

The gracious path to the front door remains, but now visitors can enjoy a number of thickly planted beds cut out around the tree trunks. And the traditional white picket fence that borders the road is neatly sandwiched between deep planting beds filled with bulbs, perennials and small shrubs. Passersby kept peeking over the fence to get a better look at the garden, so the Chaplins moved some plantings outside the fence so admirers could enjoy a close-up view.

"Every time I weed a bed, I edge it a little larger," Dawn, laughing, says of her technique for finding more room for shrubs and flowers. Her first task was to take advantage of the back garden's southern exposure and plant a formal rose garden. Before any other garden projects, a garage went in at the end of the long driveway that sweeps around the house, serving as a perfect backdrop for flowering vines.

The fresh foliage of hostas comes on in April in time to cover up dying bulb foliage and replace the early perennials, carrying the shade garden on through summer. The thickly ribbed leaves of Hosta sieboldiana var. elegans are slightly less appealing to slugs than smoother-leafed varieties.		The Chaplins grow white-flowered shooting stars (Dodecatheon meadia 'Album') from seed, and they are well worth the trouble for their early-blooming delicate flowers with dark centers and yellow styles and anthers.

The creative tension between ornamentals and edibles (between wife and husband) has been partly resolved by devoting the sunnier back garden to two large rectangles, one holding herbs and the other vegetables. Dramatically gnarled apple, plum and cherry trees, getting too old to produce well, delineate the site of the old orchard. Dave, who grew up gardening in England, has added dwarf apple trees espaliered along the back-porch railing, and tidy rows of raspberries, blueberries, black and red currants and red and green grapes. He freezes the plums and makes red- and black-currant jelly.

Dave explains that the English idea of gardening is to put things in and leave them there: "My father's garden was the same for 50 years."

Dawn, however, finds the art of gardening consists of moving things about and playing with the garden, which she goes at full tilt in the plentiful beds of ornamentals. All these new beds have so cut up the garden that it now takes three hours to mow, but that seems not to distress either member of this gardening pair.

A generous bed of tree peonies, dahlias and delphiniums brightens the sunny side garden. "When you design professionally, you quickly come to realize how much work perennials are," Dawn says of her shift toward shrubs, although plenty of perennials are pushing up through the soil to open their leaves to the April sunshine.

A border of peonies, tulips, daphne and euphorbia extends to both sides of a picket fence so passersby can more easily get a good look at the extensive plantings.

Despite losing two big cedars to a storm, the deep front garden between street and house remains shaded by large evergreens and a couple of American elms planted at the turn of the century (last, not this one). Fortunately, instead of rooty, depleted soil, the Chaplins were surprised to find rich loam. In the 1920s and '30s, the owners used this front garden area to grow strawberries, fruit trees and bulbs, so the soil was well cultivated. The previous owners had taken so many stones out of the soil that the Chaplins were able to build a small rockery from stones left piled up.

By late summer, when all the trees have leafed out, the front garden is densely shaded, a typical Northwest garden scenario that often results in all-too-familiar plantings of scraggly lawn and the same few groundcovers. Not in the Chaplins' garden, where bulbs begin the show and native and ornamental plants continue it into the summer. Dawn has added white flowers and variegated plants such as Leucothoe walteri `Rainbow' (an evergreen shrub with pink- and cream-splashed leaves) to lighten up the garden, and used native plants wherever possible to take advantage of shady conditions and lighten the maintenance workload.

Lungworts (Pulmonaria), hellebores and the native flowering red currant (Ribes sangineum) bloom along with narcissus in March, followed by tulips, ferns, trillium, the native bleeding heart (Dicentra formosa), primroses and showy, lily-like Erythronium as spring progresses.

In the summer, a few lilies bloom in the sunnier spots, with hardy fuchsias, the dusky cranebill with dark-splotched leaves (Geranium phaeum), epimedium, heucheras and hostas filling beds around the tree trunks. Rhododendrons and blue and white hydrangeas fill the layer between the smaller plantings and the taller trees. A weeping ornamental cherry tree and `Unique' rhododendrons soften the lines of the big old white house set squarely into the garden. Simple old-fashioned flowers like single peonies (chosen for their foliage as much as their flower), thalictrum, astilbe and astrantia continue the theme of harmonizing with the age of the house.

The glowing yellow flowers of Erythonium 'Citronella' are shown off against the bronzey-purple foliage of Euphorbia dulcis 'Chameleon.'

The garden outside the white picket fence is filled with blue-flowering lungwort and `Pink Perfection' tulips, with peony foliage just emerging in April to fill in as the bulbs fade. A daphne perfumes the air, and along the street sturdy euphorbia line the fence to provide eye-catching foliage through the season.

If the three-hour mowing and caring for all these plants sound daunting, obviously such chores haven't dampened the Chaplins' gardening ardor. They have bought a 24-acre farm just south of Conway in Skagit County, where they are busy planning an extensive new garden. Finally, they'll have enough space. In the meantime, every lawn edge along the walkways and planting beds in their Seattle garden is perfectly and precisely trimmed.

"Quite English that," admits Dave.

Early Bloomers for Shady Gardens

Shooting Star (Dodecatheon) are small Northwest natives related to the primrose, with delicate, reflexed flowers somewhat like the bloom of cyclamen. A rosette of pale green leaves sends up a leafless stem topped with a cluster of white, pink or magenta flowers.

Trillium ovatum is one of our most prized native plants. Trillium needs shade and woodsy soil. It will spread slowly to cover the ground with its shapely leaves and distinctive three-petaled flowers, which start out white and fade through pink to purple.

Erythroniums surprise with their lily-like appearance in early spring. Some varieties are called dog-tooth violets, but their reflexed petals resemble lilies more than violets. Grown from bulbs planted in early autumn, they have clumps of foliage, often mottled or spotted, and tall leafless stalks topped by clusters of showy flowers.

Bleeding heart has a native form, Dicentra formosa, which thrives in shade and moist soil. It has blue-green foliage and pale or deep-rose flowers on dark pink stems. The showier, familiar bleeding heart is D. spectabilis from Japan, with large bright pink or white flowers and finely dissected foliage.

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. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.