Maple-Sugar Shack Winter Scene Terrarium

In “New England Under Glass,” Tovah Martin took everything we love about the New England landscape and captured it in a series of lovely terrariums.

This snowy winter scene terrarium depicts the maple sugaring season in New England, including a maple-sugar shack.

Materials to Make a Maple-Sugar Shack Terrarium

• Open glass container
• 3/8-inch pebbles (for base drainage)
• Horticultural charcoal
• Potting soil
• Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Kosteri’ (Koster’s Hinoki cypress)
• White craft sand
• Medium-size twigs of various lengths
• Maple-sugar shack (see “Vermont in Miniature”)
• Glue gun and glue
• Very small twigs, about ¼-inch long
• Miniature figurines
• Small toy truck

Instructions to Make a Maple-Sugar Shack Terrarium

1. Wearing gloves, lay 1 to 1-1/2 inches of pebbles into the base of the glass container.
2. Add 1 tablespoon of horticultural charcoal to the bottom layer and mix it with the pebbles.
3. Add a 2-inch layer of potting soil and firm it lightly.
4. Dig a hole in the potting soil, insert the cypress, and firm it into place.
5. Water the cypress lightly.
6. Add the white desert sand, mounding it up in places to look like snowdrifts, leaving it shallow around the cypress, and sprinkling some sand on the foliage to look like freshly fallen snow.
7. Insert a grove of medium-size twigs into the sand as “trees.”
8. Put in the sugar shack.
9. Use a glue gun to stick the very small twigs together, making a “woodpile” to place in or near the sugar shack.
10. Decorate with figurines and the truck.