Blood, Sweat, and Secateurs: From Revolution to Roses

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I bought my first serious pair of secateurs from a garden centre in Croydon in about 1987. They were a pair of Felcos (which are considered to be the sine qua non in this business). To be precise, these were Felco number 2s with the distinctive red handles and the little spanner-like tool for changing the blades. It marked a moment of maturity in my gardening life - perhaps like a Confirmation or a Bar Mitzvah. I had  finally grown out of cheap, pound shop snippers and was now a serious gardener who was prepared to spend proper money on tools that will last.

Blood on the seats

I took it one stage further. For some unfathomable reason I opened the packet while sitting in my truck in the car park and, perhaps because the anticipation was too much and my hand shook with excitement, I succeeded in cutting myself very deeply. Pagans among you may see the similarity in this act to launching a Viking ship through blood to ensure a fruitful trip with lots of pillage. If such success was based on the quantity of spilled blood then I did not disappoint. I dripped blood on my trousers, I dripped blood on the upholstery and I dripped blood on the carpetings. I then opened the window and dripped blood onto the tarmac - fortunately none of the above were in pristine condition and a bit of exsanguination made little difference. Eventually, I found someone else’s Black Sabbath T-shirt under the seat and the flow was staunched although I was left feeling rather foolish with a throbbing hand and an injured pride. I still have the scar to mark that momentous afternoon - I will show it to you if you ask nicely.

Secateurs are not only the most personal of garden tools but probably the most widely used. We all have our favourites and many of us have more than one pair - Monty Don has a whole menagerie of  secateurs in his potting shed at Longmeadow. I have five pairs - one spanky Niwaki number, an Okatsune pair that I got free at Gardeners' World Live,  two pairs  that are only there for those moments when I can't find the others and a folding pair I keep in the car for emergencies. Every winter Instagram is cluttered with people polishing, sharpening and anointing their secateurs with unguents and oil (distilled from only the finest Japanese camellias) in readiness for spring. We have bespoke carriers in which we cradle them like Western sharpshooters and many tears have been shed when we accidentally lose our secateurs in either the green waste bin or the compost heap. As a heartening side note, I have reclaimed secateurs from the compost after a couple of years and, given a bit of oil and elbow grease, they recovered remarkably well.

Vive le Roi

However,  had it not been for an odd French aristocrat called  Le Marquis Antoine-Francois Bertrand de Moleville we might still be pruning roses with bread knives and preparing floristry with our teeth. De Moleville was a politician in the 1780s: those of you up on French revolutionary history will realise that that was not a good time to be either a Marquis or a figure of authority. He was an unashamed  Royalist cheerleader who, when he was the Governor of Brittany, was so unpopular that the citizenry would chuck rocks and old buns at him every time he appeared in public.

A bit like Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Come the revolution and the subsequent Reign of  Terror he fled to London where he kept himself employed by selling information on the French coastal defences to the British.

None of this behaviour indicates any sort of interest in horticulture but, when the Bourbons returned to power in 1814, he took the opportunity to sweep his dubious past behaviour under le tapis and returned to France where he amused himself by inventing the Secateur.

Nobody has any idea why he decided to do this but we are grateful that he did because, up until this point all pruning was done by a knife or, if a bit more rigour was required, a billhook. This was a hard and slow job involving frequent stops for sharpening and application of Band-Aids to cuts and lacerations.

Snip, snip

De Moleville’s secateurs are remarkably similar to those we all use today - two handles, two blades and a spring. The initial work was completed in 1815 and they were released to the general public three years later - the hiatus may perhaps have been due to the other, some might say slightly more important, event of that year - the Battle of Waterloo. Had Napoleon won the day that the Duke of Wellington described as 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life' then the Marquis may well have had to scarper again.

Very soon secateurs became incredibly popular not only in vineyards but also in the private gardens of France. Other inventors quickly brought out different patterns - anvil blades, wire cutting notches, variant springs and so on. The great William Robinson (who first developed the garden at Gravetye Manor ) said in his book Gleanings from French Gardens: 'A secateur is seen in the hands of every French fruit grower and by its means he cuts as clean as the best knife man with the best knife ever whetted'. His fellow Brits were not so easily impressed and many of them remained a bit sniffy - secateurs were sneeringly referred to as only suitable for women and as such considered a bit inferior. Properly manly British men obviously preferred the frisson of danger and the macho risk of dismemberment offered by a sharpened cleaver.

The Marquis Antoine-Francois Bertrand de Moleville died in 1818 which is quite a good innings considering how close he got to the guillotine in 1780. There are no marble statues or grand memorials to commemorate his life. In Ponsan-Soubiran (where he is buried) there are no feast days or celebrations of his genius. Instead we remember his invention every day as we carry him around with us in our pockets or in our neat leather belt holsters.

Merci, Monsieur le Marquis pour le cadeau de Sécateurs.

*My sincere apologies to French speakers listening to this article for my execrable accent.