"A puddle on the road isn't enough. Not in this heat." What Rosie from Leeds has been putting in her flower beds for 15 years so the bees still come.

Here is something most gardeners don't know. Pesticides are not the only problem for bees. On hot days, they also need clean water, and in a tidy modern garden there is often none to be found. In our story, Rosie noticed this fifteen years ago. Every spring since, she has put the same small ceramic flowers into her flower beds.

Rosie glazing one of her ceramic poppies.

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Leeds, West Yorkshire. When did you last hear real buzzing on a summer afternoon? Not somewhere off in the distance, but that full, steady hum that used to just be there, in every garden. Most people don't notice it has gone until it has been gone for a while.

Most people also know that bees are struggling. Fewer people know that when the weather turns hot, honeybees send foragers out to collect water instead of nectar. They use it to cool the hive. They look for it everywhere: in gutters, in puddles on the road, on wet paving. The clean sources, like dew, damp meadows and the edges of streams, are the first to dry up.

In our story, Rosie understood this long before she read anything about it.

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"He wanted to give me something that wouldn't wilt"

Everyone on her street in Leeds knows Rosie. She has been a potter for fifteen years, with her own studio in an old brick shed at the bottom of the garden, a kick wheel, a kiln and twenty jars of glaze on the shelf. Her first pottery class was a birthday present from her husband Frank. He wanted to give her something that wouldn't wilt. She never stopped.

The poppy became her signature early on. Open and simple, with a deep hollow in the centre. "It came out of my hands before I'd even thought about it," she says. "I glazed it, fired it, took it out of the kiln and thought: that's the one."

From the second year, she made Frank a poppy bowl for every birthday. After fifteen years, more than a dozen of them stood in the garden among the real poppies, foxgloves and clover. No two were alike.

Bee Blossoms among lavender and cornflowers.

Frank keeps bees. One summer, during a long hot spell, he poured water into one of Rosie's bowls. It was a beekeeper's instinct, not a plan.

The next morning, three bees were drinking from it.

"That's when I really started watching. Not just making pots. Watching how they land, where they land, what's too deep for them and what's too shallow, how long they stay."

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"A bee drinks differently from a bird. Sounds obvious. It wasn't, for me."

A honeybee stopping for water on a hot afternoon.

Rosie takes two bowls off the shelf: an early flat one, and a newer, deeper one with a rim that curves slightly inward. "The first ones were wrong," she says. "Too flat, too smooth. The bees tried to land and slipped. Or they didn't bother."

"A bee wants an edge. She wants to land without falling into the water, and she wants the water at a depth where she can stand."

What Rosie learned in 15 years of watching

• Bees are drawn to flower shapes and colours, so a round, open ceramic flower among the plants is easy for them to find.
• The depth matters. If it is too shallow, the water is gone in an hour. If it is too deep, a bee can fall in.
• A matte glaze gives better grip than a shiny, smooth one.
• In the shade of the plants, the water stays cooler and lasts longer than in a dish on hot paving.
• Clean water makes the difference. Puddles on the road carry oil and tyre dust. Water from the watering can doesn't.

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They look like poppies. That's the point.

The set of 4: burgundy, orange, lavender and yellow.

The bowls sit right in the flower bed, on metal stakes pushed into the soil, level with the real flowers and in their shade. There is no dish baking on the patio and no pond to dig.

"I fill them every morning," Rosie says, "with the watering can I'm already holding. Ten seconds. Then I watch who turns up."

About the Rosie Cottage Bee Blossoms

• Handmade ceramic. Each flower is wheel-thrown by hand, so no two are exactly alike.
• Matte glaze in mixed colours: pink, orange, purple and yellow/white.
• On a metal stake of about 8" (20 cm) that pushes straight into the soil, at flower height.
• Weather-resistant. They can stay out all summer. Rinse by hand, not in the dishwasher.
• Ten seconds a day. Top up with clean water from the watering can.

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"In winter I make pots. In summer I belong to the garden."

In the story, Rosie works at the wheel in winter, when the garden is asleep and the studio is warm from the wood burner. In summer she is outside with the beds and the bees.

"I know how a bee lands now," she says, looking out at the flower bed. "I know what depth works and what doesn't. Sounds like not much. But once you know it, you can't unknow it."

If your summers have gone quieter too, this isn't a big project. Four little flowers, one flower bed and ten seconds every morning.

"Our garden hums again. I wish the same for yours."

Rosie on her evening round of the flower beds.

Fifteen years of watching. Hundreds of bowls, each one a little better than the last. Every morning, before the day begins, ten seconds with the watering can, then watching who shows up first.

Sources for the statistics: Friends of the Earth, "The Bee Cause" (35 UK bee species under threat; 1 in 3 mouthfuls depends on pollinators); Bumblebee Conservation Trust / Natural History Museum (more than 270 bee species in the UK). Honeybee water collection: standard beekeeping knowledge, e.g. British Beekeepers Association.