The Pragmatic Pen: Leonard Mascall’s Horticultural Legacy
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 10, 2024
On this day, the earth embraced one of horticulture's most pragmatic scribes.
Leonard Mascall, that indefatigable author, translator, and Clerk to the Kitchen of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was laid to rest in Buckinghamshire.
One can almost hear the rustle of parchment and the snip of pruning shears as the gardening world bid farewell to this most practical of writers.
Mascall, dear readers, was not one for frivolous prose or flights of fancy. No, his quill was dipped in the ink of household management, his words aimed squarely at those who sought to tame both hearth and garden.
Can you picture him, I wonder, carefully penning his advice by candlelight, surrounded by the bustle of the Archbishop's kitchen?
In 1572, Mascall gifted the world with a tome that would set many a gardener's heart aflutter: A book of the Arte and Maner Howe to Plante and Graffe All Sortes of Trees.
Within its pages, nestled among advice on cultivating fruit trees, lay a treasure that would revolutionize the pruning world. For it was here, in this very book, that the first mention of secateurs graced the English language.
Ah, secateurs! That most elegant of gardening tools, its name plucked from the Latin secare, 'to cut'.
One can almost hear the satisfying snip as generations of gardeners shaped their shrubs and trees, all thanks to Mascall's pioneering prose.
But Mascall's literary legacy did not end with his earthly departure.
Oh no! Like a particularly vigorous perennial, his words continued to bloom even after he was laid to rest.
A year after his burial, his final opus emerged: The Booke of Engines and Traps.
Within its pages, Mascall shared 34 traps and 9 recipes for poison baits, most dedicated to the eternal struggle against the humble mouse.
And what of those perennial pests of the garden, the slugs and snails?
Mascall's advice rings as true today as it did over four centuries ago.
Picture, if you will, the dedicated gardener, up with the larks, stooping to pluck these slimy saboteurs from tender leaves and shoots. A timeless tableau of man versus mollusk, immortalized in Mascall's practical prose.
So, dear gardeners, as you tend to your plots this spring, spare a thought for Leonard Mascall.
When you reach for your secateurs or rise early to battle slugs, know that you are part of a horticultural lineage stretching back over four centuries.
For in every snip and every slug removed, Mascall's legacy lives on, as enduring as the cyclic dance of the seasons themselves.
