HELENIUM autumnale: you may never have heard of it, but if you are a good gardener it might soon be your best friend.

An Oxfordshire nursery owner who conducted her own survey of bees' favourite flowers says this explosion of red and gold comes out stem and stamen above the rest.

Rosi Rollings, 51, swapped her full-time job in the City to set up her village nursery in East Hanney five years ago, and brought her expert eye for facts and figures to bear.

An amateur beekeeper since 2008, she was determined to find which flowers her furry friends favoured.

But, try as she might, she couldn't find a guide which ranked the flowers from best to worst – so she made her own.

The mum-of-two explained: "There are several good lists of plants recommended for bees: the RHS publishes the excellent ‘plants for pollinators’ list which includes 375 species and cultivars – but the problem with any list is the implication that all of the plants on it are equal.

"Our research proves this is simply not true.

"Quantification of the relative benefit of different flowers might be very useful to help gardeners provide maximum bee-benefit from limited space."

Mrs Rollings started by growing as many of the recommended flowers as she could get her hands on: plants like lavender, sweet William, jasmine, hyssop and thyme.

Then, in 2013, she found scientists at Sussex University had developed a simple method for quantifying plant attractiveness by regularly counting bees on each plant.

So, starting the next spring and every year since, she conducted a formal survey of which bees visited each of 79 herbaceous perennials and sub-shrubs and for how long.

She even made painstaking separate counts for honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees.

And this winter, with three years' worth of data, she was finally able to produce a proper table of bees' favourite flowers.

But even she was surprised by some of the results.

The top performer, Helenium autumnale, doesn't even appear on some recommended lists, while other commonly-accepted bee fodder did not even place in her chart.

Golden rod (Solidago canadiensis) and oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), for example, attracted a few hoverflies, but mainly tiny beetles are not effective pollinators.

Mrs Rollings added: "Over the three years of counting bees, the top performers are very consistent but we are still finding more plants to test and will continue to do so."

Bolstered by her sweet success, Mrs Rollings has now pledged to continue with her floral focus groups and produce even more reliable guides.

Follow her results at rosybee.com