Here is one of my rules: when in a foreign city, check for a botanical garden. Rome’s is a disappointment and Berlin’s needs an upgrade, but the botanical gardens in New York, Edinburgh and Munich are unmissable. Even those that fall between these extremes keep green thoughts alive in a temporarily urbanised mind. One green thought leads to another, as I have just found in Italy.

Padua’s botanical garden in northern Italy traces its history back to 1545 and lays claim to be the oldest in existence. In Italy the 1540s were indeed a formative time for botanical gardens. Padua’s began with a vote by the Senate in Venice, Padua’s overlord, in May 1545. In December, Florence followed suit at the prompting of its grand duke Cosimo de Medici. While Pisa had a botanical garden before 1545, as a letter referring to it seems to prove, Padua’s claim to be the oldest rests on it being the botanical garden that has existed longest on the same site. Certainly, these Italian gardens are all older than any in England. The first English botanical garden is Oxford’s, founded in 1621 on the site of a medieval Jewish cemetery.

I first saw Padua’s garden in a hot August 35 years ago. It was interesting, but in need of attention. It has received it since 2000 and is now in much better form. It is not only because it has a new visitor centre, Biodiversity Garden and Botanical Museum. Padua’s glasshouses still have a good collection of carnivorous plants and specimens of the small variety of palm tree that fascinated Goethe on his visit in 1786. He studied it carefully and went on to write a book on the “metamorphosis” of plants, arguing for an original Ur-plant from which all others derive. He had no idea of evolution and Darwin’s theories make his a curiosity.

Padua’s garden was not just a site for his misunderstanding. He appreciated other plants, especially a scarlet-flowered outdoor climber that is still a mainstay of gardens in London and warm climates. Campsis radicans is extremely vigorous and willing to flower even in warm Britain, bearing those red-orange trumpet-shaped flowers that give it the popular name of Trumpet Vine. Its native home is the east coast of the US and southern Ontario.

English settlers in Virginia were quick to send plants back home, though it was an invasive climber in the wild. By 1790, it was well established on Padua’s wall, where Goethe admired its magical effect like a tapestry, covering the wall with scarlet bells. The better form now is Madame Galen, one with bigger and better trumpets, which originated in Italy and was put on the market in the 1880s. I can never decide if in ordinary gardens its vivid flowers are worth all the space its vigorous stems occupy. It has no scent.

Goethe knew our campsis as Bignonia, for many years its name in gardens. Padua’s garden was not founded for botany as we now understand it. In 1533 the city’s university had a professor for the “reading of Simples”: plants with therapeutic properties. The Padua garden was to be a garden of medicinal plants, linking up with this teaching. Its naming and taxonomy were not ours, but it had a superbly designed plan.

After his visit, Goethe wrote a book arguing for an original Ur-plant from which all others derive. He had no idea of evolution

The architect Andrea Moroni drew it at the very beginning. He was already working for the monastery that ceded the ground for the new garden: he devised a perfect circle in which individual flower beds would lie. The circle was defined by a perimeter of high walls against which there were 16 segmented beds. Further inside there was a second circle dominated by four rectangular subdivisions, each with a further pattern of flower beds.

The outer circle of walls has been replaced by a rectangular one, but the curving segments are still visible and are mostly planted with fine trees. Further inside, the circle of the plan is still visible, as are the inner subdivisions and little flower beds. They are a testimony to meticulous and rational geometric planning. Botanical gardens should be based on an underlying notion of order, imposed by man on nature. Padua’s still is.

The main inner subdivisions are defined by smart railings, also a later introduction, but the beds have a style that would be transferable to English gardens too. They are edged and divided by stone blocks laid vertically with one thin curved edge protruding just above ground level. Modern designers sometimes set brick on edge for a similar effect, but Padua’s stone blocks are more stylish.

I measured the spacing to help you copy it. Most of the little beds are about 3ft wide and long. Some of them taper to a point and make a narrowing triangle, but others are a grid of squares. The paths between them are 4ft wide and surfaced with smart grey-yellow grit. No weeds poke through.

Mild, sunny October is not hot August, but I found the outdoor plantings and the hundreds of pots more cheerful than on my former visit. Stone-edged beds of purple autumn crocuses and colchicums are rather smart, as are beds with red, not pink, amaryllis and even a grass with fluffy purple heads, Muehlenbergia capillaris, which is widely on sale in Britain. The stone edges prevent this muhly grass from becoming invasive.

What most impressed me was the resistance of two particular plants to a Paduan dry summer, though books often say they need a damp soil. Plainly they do not. One is a tree and the other is a good herbaceous plant, flowering now.

Old tall trees are a distinction of the botanical garden, as in Florence and Pisa. A ginkgo tree goes back to 1750, before Goethe’s visit, and is a true hermaphrodite, as its male trunk has been grafted with a female branch. A superb Magnolia grandiflora was planted in 1786 and is even bigger than a fine one in the cloisters of Padua’s famous cathedral. A tulip tree towers to the sky, but what impresses me is a big Swamp cypress, which is doing likewise.

Swamp cypress, or taxodium, is often found in wet ground, but it does not insist on it. Botanical gardens have big specimens in dry places and hot climates, from New York to Padua. In gardens and fields we should be more bold and use it away from water. We should also be bolder about the spotted little toad lily or tricyrtis. The official advice is always to plant this October-flowering plant in shade in damp soil. Why though is Tricyrtis formosana flowering freely in Padua, 2ft high and happy in a hot summer without irrigation? Here too I think we have been inflexible. Slugs, not sun, are what kills this excellent plant in Britain.

Padua’s botanical garden is good to visit, but the overriding reason for visiting the city as a tourist is its Arena chapel, frescoed by Giotto, the maestro, from 1303-1305. With green thoughts in mind I visited it too and became aware of details I had never expected. Art and flowers have featured in this column all year, but I will save Giotto’s surprises for that appropriate season whose founding event he also painted, Christmas. 

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THOUSANDS of elderly customers at a major building society risk being left behind after it confirmed it is axing a key service.

In an email to customers, Nationwide said that its Loyalty Saver account holders will no longer be able to use a passbook to manage their savings account.

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These savings accounts are reserved for customers who have used the bank for many years and often reward them with top interest rates.

Nationwide announced that it was axing passbooks in July but it had not yet confirmed the exact date it would do so until now.

Passbooks provide a vital lifeline to thousands of older customers who are unable to bank online or by mobile app.

The books are issued by a bank or building society and allow the account holder to keep a physical record of how much money they have paid in and taken out of their account.

They can also be useful if you want to limit impulse spending as there are a lot more steps to take with each transaction.

In spite of this, Nationwide has confirmed that they will be axed from February 6, 2025.

But as more banks move towards digital banking they have decided to stop offering passbooks.

Barclays and Santander both decided to scrap passbook savings accounts, which are no longer available to new customers.

Meanwhile, Nationwide has already stopped offering new passbook accounts to customers.

The building society said only 2% of its 16 million customers still use passbooks, which is equivalent to around 120,000 people.

Dennis Reed, a campaigner at Silver Voices, said: “Here is another example of a finance company telling older customers to get lost, we can’t be bothered with you.

“The local building society branch with a trusty passbook provides a good, friendly and safe banking service.

“We have no objection to digital banking, which has its advantages, but there should always be a face to face non-digital alternative available.”

What did Nationwide tell customers?

Nationwide said: “After February 6, 2025, if you had a passbook you won’t be able to use it anymore.

“But you can still manage your account in a branch, if that’s what you like to do.”

It also told customers that their account details and the way they use their account will change.

For example, customers may be given a new sort code and account number.

It confirmed that the changes will not affect the customer’s interest rate.

Automatic payments, such as direct debits, which enter their savings account each month will not be impacted.

Can I still bank in branch?

Customers will still be able to manage their account at one of the bank’s branches.

Nationwide has pledged to keep branches open in every town and city where it currently has one until 2028.

Paper bank account statements can also be provided in store.

The bank has also launched a new savings wallet, which comes with its branch savings account.

Nationwide said: “If you like using your passbook and would prefer something similar to keep track of your savings, we may have another branch savings account that could be right for you.

“It comes with a savings wallet that has a pocket for mini statements and a card.”

For more information about the account visit your local branch.

You need to be a permanent UK resident to open one of these accounts.

Customers can also manage their account through internet banking or via the Nationwide banking app.

It is understood that the company will be taking on temporary staff to help with the transition from the old passbooks to the new savings wallets.

The news comes after Nationwide announced that it was axing passbooks in July.

At the time Nationwide said that it wants to “modernise” passbooks next year, with the process expected to take seven months.

A Nationwide spokesperson said: “We are modernising passbooks rather than removing them, but while they are changing, banking in branch isn’t.

“We are maintaining the benefits our passbook customers value most – face-to-face service and having a physical record of transactions.

“As the UK’s largest building society, we are investing in our systems so we can offer the products and services our customers expect from a modern mutual.”

Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.

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Taking to the stage this week in front of an annual gathering of activist investors at New York’s Pierre Hotel, Starboard Value chief executive Jeff Smith was in a hurry to explain his latest bold bet.

After speeding through the hedge fund’s plans for software giant Salesforce and consumer drugmaker Kenvue, Smith flicked to a slide of the double-helix logo of one of America’s most venerable pharmaceutical companies.

“Anybody want to talk about Pfizer?” the 52-year-old asked with a wry smile.

Smith’s presentation to about 400 investors at the 13D Active-Passive conference was meant to be the first Wall Street had heard of Starboard’s $1bn stake in the New York-based drugmaker. But a series of seemingly misfired emails from former Pfizer finance chief Frank D’Amelio, who briefly collaborated with Starboard, had put the company on alert.

The activist investor’s call for a shake-up of Pfizer was initially backed by D’Amelio and ex-CEO Ian Read but within 72 hours the pair had fallen back into line, coming out in support of Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla. Starboard accused Pfizer of foul play.

Smith expressed gratitude to Bourla at the conference for delivering a Covid-19 vaccine that had restored normality, before calmly outlining how Pfizer under his leadership had destroyed at least $20bn in value through a series of misguided acquisitions and research and development bets.

Calling on the 14-person board to “hold management accountable”, he warned: “They can’t follow Einstein’s definition of insanity and continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.”

Pfizer ranks among Starboard’s biggest and most daring gambles — not least because there are few quick cures for the pharma group’s ills. The $8bn hedge fund’s highest-profile skirmish in the sector, when it took a stake in Bristol Myers Squibb before opposing its $74bn acquisition of Celgene, came to little but still turned a profit for the fund.

An adviser who worked with BMS said Smith’s case against Pfizer — outlined in a 74-page deck — was “far better prosecuted” than its opposition to the Celgene takeover. “I don’t think he’s this guy on a crusade to make Pfizer a better company . . . he has a position in the stock and he wants to make money,” they added.

Smith and Starboard and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment. Pfizer declined to comment.

Smith has become the face of one of the more divisive corners of finance. The top 50 activist hedge funds controlled more than $156bn in assets by the end of last year, with activists holding stakes in nearly a fifth of S&P 500 companies, yet companies in the sector have a habit of creating enemies of scorned chief executives and board members following bruising proxy fights.

A native of New York’s Long Island, Smith, whose father was a businessman and mother was a real estate broker, had envisioned from a young age a future as an entrepreneur. After graduating from Wharton Business School, he kicked off his career as a Société Générale investment banker but was quickly summoned home to help with a dilemma affecting his father’s company.

Fresh Juice Co was bogged down in a boardroom dispute after acquiring a series of competitors that were granted board seats. To ease the stress on his father, Smith, then 26, engineered a sale to the Saratoga Beverage Group for about $20mn.

He launched Starboard in 2011 alongside two partners, spinning it out of an investment group previously owned by SocGen. Starboard has since targeted 153 companies, including Yahoo, AOL and News Corp, and several other of the biggest names in corporate America.

Smith has served on or advised 17 company boards, chairing four of them. In a seminal 2014 campaign against Darden Restaurants, laid out in a 294-page deck that criticised its Italian dining chain Olive Garden for overspending on breadsticks and for no longer salting its pasta water to extend the warranty on its pots, the activist investor replaced all 12 board members in a proxy fight, a feat never repeated at a Fortune 500 company.

Starboard’s ruthlessness earned Smith the moniker “the most feared man in corporate America” in a 2014 Forbes article but many of the executives who served under him said he had a more deft touch. One of his other early campaigns was against biotech Surmodics.

“Everybody’s fearful of activists because they just don’t understand them,” said Gene Lee, who Smith promoted to Darden chief executive. Lee said Smith was open-minded to how Darden “wasn’t quite as broken as he thought”, and was instrumental to “right[ing] the ship quickly”.

Smith’s playbook is a long way from the more public and hostile crusades waged by other activist investors Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman.

Far from being glued to a Bloomberg terminal, his due diligence on a business is done on the shop floor. After becoming Darden’s chair, he and fellow board members did shifts at Olive Garden restaurants to study the business up close. At outlets of Papa Johns, another company he chaired, Smith learnt how to make pizza.

Marc Benioff, founder and chief executive of Salesforce, fostered an unexpected bond with Smith after Starboard became the first of six activist investors on its shareholder register.

“He’s very sweet, he’s very casual and he’s very insightful,” said Benioff. “I would not mind being an activist myself . . . I wish I had met [Smith] years before, it would have made the business even stronger.”

Similarly, Smith’s respect for D’Amelio grew when they worked across the table from one another when Starboard waged a campaign against health insurer Humana, where the former Pfizer executive was a board member. That led Smith to call D’Amelio when he was considering an investment in Pfizer. D’Amelio then recruited Read.

Losing the support of the two former executives has weakened Starboard’s campaign against Pfizer, but not terminally. Shares in Pfizer jumped 5.6 per cent in the days after Starboard’s stake was revealed but those gains have since evaporated. Pfizer’s market value stood at $162bn on Friday morning, more than 50 per cent down on its pandemic peak.

One executive who fell out with Smith during one of Starboard’s proxy fights said they hoped Bourla would triumph against the hedge fund boss, who was “beneath him in terms of a business stature”, if a proxy fight were to break out.

But another possibility is that Bourla, who met Smith for the first time last week at Pfizer’s New York headquarters, becomes his latest unlikely collaborator.

Global insurance brokerage Arthur J Gallagher & Co has acquired London-based investment consulting firm, Redington Ltd.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Redington provides investment, research and technology services to pension funds, wealth managers and institutional investor clients primarily in the UK.

Following the acquisition, Redington CEO Sylvia Pozezanac and her team will remain in their current location.

They will report to David Piltz, head of Gallagher’s UK employee benefits and HR consulting operations.

Patrick Gallagher Jr, chairman and CEO of Gallagher Insurance, said: “As a leader in the investment consulting space, Redington brings exceptional talent and represents a fantastic cultural fit.

“Their deep capabilities in modelling and investment market research will enhance our existing consulting services and help our clients achieve superior financial security outcomes.”

Arthur J Gallagher & Co is a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm.

The US-based brokerage provides these services in approximately 130 countries around the world through its owned operations and a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

The Redington acquisition is the latest it has made in the UK corporate advisory space. It recently acquired Buck UK, an employer solution business.

BEER lovers who hanker for the days when a pint cost just £2 should head to Wrexham, a study found. 

Famous for its football club, owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, it tops the table for budget bevvies.

It comes after official data released this month showed the average price for a pint of lager in the UK was £4.79 – a staggering 140% pricier than the same tipple in the Welsh city.

The last time British drinkers parted with an average of £2 for a pint of beer was in the year 2000, Office for National Statistics figures show. 

Next best value spot for a pub crawl in 2024 is Bury, Greater Manchester, where a pint of beer is typically priced £2.75.

Nearby Bolton (£3.10), Blackpool, Lancs (£3.25) and Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, Scotland (£3.25) round off the big five savers for ale fans.

North of the Border beer hotspots Dunfermline and Glenrothes, where pub-goers can blow the froth off a cold one for just £3.40, Hull, East Yorks (£3.47), Northampton (£3.50) and Scottish town Ayr (£3.50) complete the top 10.

The data, collated by hospitality supply firm Alliance Online, covers draught lager, other keg beers, and traditional cask real ale.

Researchers found the cheapest pint in Wrexham at Wetherspoon watering hole The Elihu Yale, where a pint of Bud Light or Worthington’s Creamflow was £1.99, just 10 minutes’ walk from the Red Dragons’ STōK Racecourse stadium.

While landlady at The Long Pull, Lisa Lock, said: “Cost of living is a big one for the whole industry, but we manage to keep our prices as low as possible and the customers keep coming back.”

Elsewhere, Glyn’s Bar, where Wrexham supporters enjoy matchday bevvies, said it served pints for just £2.30 on Thursdays.

The report said: “The Welsh city of Wrexham is crowned the cheapest place in the UK for a beer.

“Famous for Wrexham AFC, headed up by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, their fans will be happy to know that they have access to bargain beer after a match.”

Alliance Online marketing manager Rachael Kiss added: “Our study shows that customers can still very much get a bargain beer if they look for one.”

You can read the full list below:

• Wrexham, Wales – £2.00
• Bury, England – £2.75
• Bolton, England – £3.10
• Blackpool, England – £3.25
• Kilmarnock, Scotland – £3.25
• Dunfermline, Scotland – £3.40
• Glenrothes, Scotland – £3.40
• Hull, England – £3.47
• Northampton, England – £3.50
• Ayr, Scotland – £3.50

Why have beer prices risen?

Prolonged periods of high inflation have led the price of a pint to rise over the past few years.

World issues such as Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine also mean the price of barley, which is a key ingredient in beer, has risen.

These factors, coupled with rising energy costs, have meant that many pubs and bars have had to raise the cost of pints to cover their own overheads.

This has damaged the UK hospitality sector with many businesses forced to close for good as punters can no longer able to afford a trip to their local.