I really appreciate you taking the time to leave such detailed feedback. Rest assured, I will be taking this into account to make improvements.
For the ice flower, it is actually working as intended but I can see why it's confusing. Each cycle it consumes 1 water. It is giving you +1 for itself and +1 for each of the adjacent flowers (-1+1+4 = 4). This isn't communicated well enough though and is needlessly obtuse.
Also, I really love the idea of bonuses based on being positioned relative to other specific flowers. I hadn't considered that, and it might just end up making it into the game. Thanks for playing and stay tuned!