Eventually all three left the garden but kept playing together sporadically. Sanchez, who was still growing plants on his own, showed up selling plants at Artemisia Native Plant Nursery in El Sereno, which opened in 2018. The owner, Nicole Calhoun, held community events at the nursery "just to let people know we existed." Sanchez said he had a band, and in April 2019, Calhoun invited the group to perform.

Cervantes, a self-taught drummer and horticulturist working as an agriculture inspector for the Los Angeles County agriculture commissioner, was then working in the native plant section of Descanso Gardens. A colleague invited him to attend the show, and he was intrigued when he heard the band's name "because I grew up idolizing Rage Against the Machine. Their music had angst, but it was angst toward Mother Earth, a voice for Mother Earth, and right up my alley."

That night was a big turning point. "Hector went up to them after the show and said, 'You guys need a drummer. Can I join your band?' And I said, 'I want to join too,'" said Calhoun, who studied cello in college, "got tapped out with the classical scene" and eventually started playing electric bass for "fun, punk school garage bands."

About a year later, Sanchez brought an intern at his nursery to practice, Jason Suddith, to play rhythm guitar. And just like that, Sage Against the Machine had six members and a camaraderie that went beyond the music.

"We get on really well, musically and not musically," said Suddith, who is now the manager of the Arroyo Seco Foundation's Hahamongna Native Plant Nursery. "People tell us, 'Oh, you guys sound really good for practicing so infrequently,' but it comes from a love for each other. We do tend to spend holidays together, with all our families. Even the band wives have their own separate group chat. It's more than a silly band to us. We're friends who consider each other like family."

But it's also a way for the group to do a little proselytizing about native plants "and blow off steam too, because we care about the natural world, and it's being destroyed all the time," said Calhoun. "We're trying to rebuild some of those relationships and we give each other strength. It's important to everyone's mental and spiritual health. We do a lot of s— talking too, and it feels great to have that release."

Finding times to practice is challenging. After all, these aren't teenagers playing in a garage band after school. The band members are in their mid-30s to mid-40s and working full-time jobs. They're all married or in committed relationships and most have children. Calhoun, whose daughter is 2, is trying to finish a graduate degree in landscape architecture, "so I can take my business a little further."

Still, they're all committed to performing, and will release their new album on Spotify later this month. Just don't look for Sage Against the Machine at traditional rager venues. The band is most likely to perform at nurseries and family-friendly plant festivals, such as their upcoming gigs on April 13 at the Puente Latino Association Earth Day celebration at DeForest Park in Long Beach, April 21 at the Earth Day Celebration, plant swap and market in Thousand Oaks and May 25 at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster. (Check out their Instagram page @nativesageagainstthemachine for exact times.)

People who attend the band's performances get to hear lyrics that are often playful, as in the bouncy polka "Munching Milkweed," about a monarch's metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, and sometimes playfully suggestive, as in "California Poppy Chulo," a play on the Spanish phrase "papi chulo," which translates to "a hot guy." Ostensibly, it's a song about bees looking for flowers to pollinate, but the opening lines make it clear that this is more than a nature documentary:

He's a California poppy chulo,

...continued

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