I’VE lost – or should I say misplaced – my secateurs. A bit like your thumbs, you don’t appreciate quite how much you use them until you’re without them. Buying a replacement is going to cost me upwards of £40 but you’ll appreciate that I’ll not shell out for a new pair until I establish firmly that the old ones, complete with eye-catching bright red handles, are lost, rather than just misplaced.
For those who may find the price quoted above for new secateurs a little excessive, let me assure you that I would not fork out such a sum if I did not believe it justified.
When I was what’s termed a novice gardener, the price of my tools reflected my inexperience. Spades, loppers, trowels and shears would be purchased on a whim, most likely from a discount supermarket.
But over the years I learned these goods were cheap for a reason – they were crap.
Whether bent, blunted or broken they rarely survived more than a year and with no replaceable parts available they ended up at the local recycling centre, the metal components the only bit worth salvaging.
I therefore vowed to spend more money on my tools to secure better quality, making a corresponding pledge to take greater care of them.
My Felco secateurs were the embodiment of this new approach. Swiss manufactured and forged from aluminium, these ergonomically designed, bypass secateurs had replaceable parts and a tool for sharpening. They even came with their own leather holster, though it must be stressed that this was used for storage only rather than strutting around garden like Wild Bill Hickok.
They were on course to last a lifetime until a couple of weekends ago when they couldn’t be located, our last known engagement coming a few days earlier when they were used to snip some rambling rose cuttings.
Ironically though, while the Felco secateurs represent the ultimate in design and craftsmanship – and carry a price tag which reflects both – they aren’t my favourite tool. That honour instead goes to the blunter and much less sophisticated mattock.
Consisting of a heavy steel head with a adze blade and a sharper axe-type blade on the opposite side, this is a tool that can be traced back to pre-history.
The mattock combines the impact of a pick with some of the digging capabilities of a spade, though used in a manner that draws the earth towards you rather than away and upwards, a technique known as ‘grubbing’. It’s been 20 years since I bought mine, though when you include a wooden shaft, they tend retail at around half what you’d pay for a pair of Felco secateurs.
Typically, I thought I’d lost mine a decade or so ago and even had some local kids earmarked as the chief suspects for nicking it. I came across it inadvertently some months later, tripping on the shaft in long grass where I’d been utilising it to clear the aforementioned grass, a task in which it is rivalled only by a bulldozer.
Unlike the secateurs, which I fear will be rendered unusable if they are forced to spend an entire winter outdoors, the mattock was unaffected by its prolonged period in the undergrowth. Many years later and many nights left out at the mercy of the elements, it still fulfils its purpose effectively and without complaint.
