The Frenchtown Community Association has found renewed interest in hacking away at the brambles in the Brown Street River Garden in the past few months, partly as a result of an online community bulletin board.

Association member Steve Morrow said the project was originally conceived about five years ago as a community vegetable garden, with a master gardener available to help with the project. But family commitments took the gardener away from the project, and it fizzled.

Robin Tannenbaum, a Brown Street resident, said an old-fashioned community vegetable garden is a time-consuming project and off the agenda right now, though it may come back around. She said most of the current momentum has been building over the last six months for new landscape, created by Tannenbaum’s husband, Peter Burke, a landscape designer.

“Community projects can be slow,” Tannenbaum said. “But it’s taking off.”

The city, which previously supplied materials and labor and installed stone tiers in the garden, is again offering to help out as the project moves forward, with labor and mulch, among other things. City officials joined the group for a meeting in the garden on Sept. 4 to discuss what to do next. Burke wrote in an e-mail that the group intents to plant trees, shrubs and perennials this fall.

While it’s not the main line for communication, and maybe not even the preferred line, Jeffrey Wood’s contribution of an online community site through his nonprofit group eHope has been a “key” addition for the garden project, said Tannenbaum.

The site, more than just a forum, allows members to stay in touch with quick messages, notes, thank-yous, pictures, calendars and task-scheduling in a centralized way that wouldn’t be as organized if done through phone calls and monthly meetings. The site is constantly updated, and a notice for every update is sent out to members so they know what’s going on as it happens.

Wood, who is involved with the garden group, set up eHope as a network to organize caregivers around neighbors with life-threatening illnesses after meeting a neighbor in Westbrook who had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Wood said the site isn’t about building community online, but about providing a tool for coordination.

The garden association has the only such site on eHope. Recent activity on the community site included tasks posted to mow and weed the garden, for which any member could sign up to volunteer. Morrow posted a thank-you note to the city for clearing out heavy brush, letting the entire group know about recent activity in the garden without a rash of phone calls.

Burke also posted notes for discussion ahead of the last association meeting. The site has helped keep the group active. At the meeting Sept. 4, about a dozen people showed up, a fairly large number for a neighborhood meeting about a garden.

“It has really galvanized the community,” said Tannenbaum.

Created by Peter Burke, the landscape design for the Brown Street River Garden will include trees, shrubs and perennials this fall.