I've done a search and know what is supposed to happen when the villagers water the field ... but ...

I've reached my maximum population twice now (let them die off to about 40 then started re-populating), my research is complete and everything built. My population at present is about half builders and half farmers and I have over 1 million in food with 800,000 unused tech points (I left it on high speed before I maxed my fertility out, waiting for my population to die off so I could get a golden child eventually).

First of all my villagers don't get any water from the lagoon to water the field ... they get it from the well ... the only thing they do in the lagoon is their laundry . I also redirect my villagers to water the field because they won't do it on their own ... they'll just get curious about it . To redirect them I pick them up and put them down on the well. Sometimes it says "watering crops", sometimes "drinking well water" and then I get the "trying to water strange patch".

I don't know how much water it takes but I've been trying now for 28 hours straight (7.5 hours of that monitored with me manually redirecting the villagers)and still no field of flowers. I do have version 1.01 so that's not it either.

Any suggestions and or encouragement will be greatly appreciated

Try dropping a villager on the dead water field and see what happens.