This is a very good quotation, Madri, thank you.

In California some bushes have pretty flowers with nice smell, for example, lantana (smells like strawberry). But from botanical point of view it is categorized as "weed." I always wondered if lantana could be offerable, because I've seen many devotees doing that.

Also, most of the red roses "in this day and age" don't have fragrance, so I personally don't offer them. Some devotees say, however, that if a nice-looking flower doesn't have fragrance, it is still OK to use it as a decoration for Krishna's turban. I wonder how authoritative this opinion is.

And, of course, we have some cold places in this world, where flowers are very scanty and not fragrant. In this case, if Krishna happens to come there, I think, He will understand the situation and will not allow the life of the pujari " to get spoiled. " :)

sorry to change the topic somewhat but since you happened to mention Prabhupada's Garland, I wanted to ask a question about garlands.

Recently I was informed that one should never make garlands out of ALL white flowers.
Apparently this dates back to the time when Ravana saw the omens of his death by Lord Rama (he looked in the mirror and had no head etc etc and was wearing a completely white garland)

Since then I have been adding at least ONE red or Pink Flower when I have had to make white garland (as mentioned by previous poster - sometimes its very hard to get flowers in winter!)

But being the research-aholic that I am - I have not been able to find any reference to this at all. However I did find reference in Ramayana to both Vivishvana and Lakshmana both wearing white garlands (along with white silk cloth and holding white umbrella) [SUNDARA KANDA, sarga 27]
HOWEVER these events predate the above mentioned ill omens of Ravana.

Does anyone have any more information regarding these 'completely white' garlands?

PS - also regarding the winter flowers - I previously lived in Canada where temperatures reached -50 degrees and I can honestly say that not one day ever went by when we did not have flowers for our deities. We had to grow marigolds indoors under painter's halogen 500 watt lights (x3) and the power bill was enormous.. but if you REALLY try.. you can always have flowers for the lord ;-)