Send data string from Arduino UNO to ESP8266-01

Question

Is there anyway to send a string from an Arduino UNO to a ESP8266-01 (one with only 8 pins RX, TX, CH-PD, vcc, ground, reset, GPIO0, GPIO2) without using without using AT commands. I've looked everywhere and from what I can see UART doesn't work and SoftwareSerial uses only AT commands. I am at my wits end. Can anyone help here? please.
I have tried Serial.write but only writes String and Esp8266 only receives ints.

I found some code I thought might work but so far I can see that the arduino is sending <100.00:200:00>, but on the esp8266 all I get is four backwards question marks

this is the code on the Arduino UNO

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial ESPserial(2, 3); // TX | RX
 float water = 100.00;
 float battery = 200.00;
void setup() 
{
    Serial.begin(9600);     // communication with the host computer
    //while (!Serial)   { ; }

    // Start the software serial for communication with the ESP8266
    ESPserial.begin(57600);  

}

void loop() 
{
   ESPserial.print("<");
          ESPserial.print(water,2); 
          ESPserial.print(":");
          ESPserial.print(battery,2);
      ESPserial.print(">");
      Serial.print("<");
          Serial.print(water,2);
         Serial.print(":");
          Serial.print(battery,2); 
      Serial.print(">");
     delay(10000);
}

and here is the code on the ESP8266

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
#include <string.h>

SoftwareSerial ESPSerial(2,0); 

const byte numChars = 32;
char receivedChars[numChars];
boolean newData = false;

String water;
String battery;


void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  ESPSerial.begin(57600);
  delay(10);

}

void loop() {
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
  recvWithStartEndMarkers();
  showNewData();

 water= getValue(receivedChars, ':', 0);
  battery = getValue(receivedChars, ':', 1);
Serial.println(water);
}

void recvWithStartEndMarkers() {
    static boolean recvInProgress = false;
    static byte ndx = 0;
    char startMarker = '<';
    char endMarker = '>';
    char rc;

    while (ESPSerial.available() > 0 && newData == false) {
        rc = ESPSerial.read();

        if (recvInProgress == true) {
            if (rc != endMarker) {
                receivedChars[ndx] = rc;
                ndx++;
                if (ndx >= numChars) {
                    ndx = numChars - 1;
                }
            }
            else {
                receivedChars[ndx] = '\0'; // terminate the string
                recvInProgress = false;
                ndx = 0;
                newData = true;
            }
        }

        else if (rc == startMarker) {
            recvInProgress = true;
        }
    }

The Arduino sends writes every 10 seconds and the esp prints the ???? every 10 seconds but with a lag.

I am not sure what the pin out to pin in should be. Right now I have the Arduino 2(TX) attached to the GPIO0 and the Arduino 3(RX) attached to the GPIO2.

Can someone look at my code and see what I am doing wrong. I thought I would send over two values because eventually I want to show water level and battery level.