[6][7][8] When they began to write music together as L7, Gardner and Sparks were active in the creative Art punk DIY scene of musicians, poets, and performance artists in the Echo Park/Silverlake area.

Gardner and L7 formed a pro-choice organization called Rock for Choice, which staged many benefit shows featuring popular bands such as Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana.

[10] In a 1993 article for Spin which featured L7 on the magazine's cover, Renée Crist described L7 as "four of the funniest, meanest, strongest, coolest, most pissed-off women I know" and as "wild, rambunctious, spontaneous" with a stage show that "is a wash of buddy love, crowd working, and acrobatics".

[12] Gardner, in 2000, became the first woman to have her breasts plaster-cast by Cynthia Plaster Caster, the artist who had spent decades casting impressions of rock music's most famous phalluses.

[17] On the latest L7 album Scatter the Rats (released in 2019 to generally favorable reviews),[18] Gardner wrote several songs including "Fighting the Crave", "Proto Prototype", and "Cool About Easy".