Netizens turn topiary into iconic showpiece

On a spring day in Shanghai, on a grassy area of Suhewan center in Jing'an district, a giant green sculpture of a West Highland terrier unexpectedly went viral.

It does not have many gorgeous flowers adorning its body. Instead, it is covered in wild grass, with fluffy hair and a color that gradually blends from fresh green to natural beige, with a hint of lazy and messy relaxation.

Netizens gave it a down-to-earth and highly resonant nickname — scruffy little dog.

On major social media platforms, topics such as "Shanghai's scruffy little dog cures workers", and "scruffy little dog check-in guide" continue to be flooded with posts, striking an emotional chord and resonating with young people, thanks to its casual and sloppy appearance.

Scruffy little dog becoming the top internet celebrity of this year's Shanghai International Flower Show is not a fluke, but an inevitable coincidence, experts said.

Wang Mian, a 28-year-old local, said that he and his family visit the scruffy little dog frequently, and they all like it very much.

The builder — Jing'an landscaping and city appearance administrative bureau — has been deeply involved in three-dimensional greening and green sculpture landscaping, accumulating rich practical experience.

Back in the early stages of forming ideas, the Jing'an landscaping and city appearance administrative bureau and the Shanghai green maintenance project team visited the site multiple times for on-site surveys. The plot where the scruffy little dog is located is a pet-friendly area at Suhewan center, and people often come to walk their dogs.

So it came to mind to create a cute pet amusement park in this area with a theme of a small dog green sculpture. But, which type of pet dog? The initial list from the project team contained a Chinese rural dog, a Yorkshire terrier, and a West Highland white terrier.

After repeated on-site observations, the team concluded that the West Highland white terrier is cuter and more likely to evoke emotional resonance. Furthermore, they learned that this breed has a mild body odor and sheds less hair, and has become very popular in recent years. At the same time, they have a lively and relaxed temperament, which aligns with the positioning of the Shanghai International Flower Show as an "international" showpiece.

The follow-up building process was assigned to three design teams: styling design, structural design and horticultural design. Feng Rui, manager of the project team, said the plot covers an area of approximately 700 square meters, with an open space. The scruffy little dog is expected to have a height of 5 meters. Controlling the spatial proportion and visual hierarchy of large installations, and accurately adapting to open spatial scales, require professional art sculptors to refine.

After the art sculptor refined the shape, the structural designer appeared. The scruffy little dog has a large body shape. Its wind resistance, pressure resistance and load-bearing capacity determine its safety.

At this point, a professional structural designer controls the entire process of building the structure, accurately calculating the stress points and load-bearing limits of the sculpture, and setting the principle that the overall weight of the green plant canopy should not exceed 10 metric tons.

Next comes the highlight — horticultural design. Green sculpture commonly uses ready-made plug seedlings, but the difficulty of this design stems from how to replicate the long hair of the West Highland white terrier. The gardening team decided to adopt herbaceous plants such as fine-leaved needle grass.

"Since we had not tried green carving of fine-leaved needle grass before, we first made a 1:1 dog head for sampling and observed the effect of the dog's fur. When the experimental results meet expectations, we can boldly implement them," said Feng.

Moreover, the styling method of gardeners is also very important. There is a group of horticulturists from Zhejiang province who specialize in green carving techniques. Up to 10 garden artists completed the planting process of the scruffy little dog in three days.

Their techniques are delicate and precise, following the natural growth pattern of dog hair: the facial plants are short and stretched to both sides, while the cheek and limb plants are slender and fluffy, controlling the tilt angle and spacing of each plant.

Lin Xianping, associate professor at Hangzhou City University, said: "The popularity of the scruffy little dog is not accidental. It breaks the shackles of traditional floral aesthetics."

"In the past, flower green carvings pursued beautiful flowers with regular and symmetrical shapes. However, this West Highland terrier's green carving is made of wild grass, with fluffy and messy hair, natural gradient grass color, and a native rough grass form, breaking away from the homogenized aesthetic of artificial refinement. The visual contrast is extremely easy to attract the public's attention," he said.

Ultimately, the scruffy little dog "accurately hits the emotional pain points of contemporary young people. Currently, some young people are trapped in internal anxiety and have been in a tense state of life for a long time, which generally leads to a psychological appeal of rejecting perfection and accepting relaxation", he further posited.

"The lazy and unkempt appearance of the messy puppy has provided a carrier for young people to vent their emotions and empathize with themselves."

The allure of the scruffy little dog is self-perpetuating, and is underpinned by a sense of trust, as there is no official marketing plan for the showpiece. It relies on netizens to spontaneously check-in and spread memes, according to Lin, who noted that its appeal had subsequently led citizens to collectively call for a delay in retiring it.

"Departments responded flexibly, giving the landscape a humanistic warmth," Lin said.

That was despite the realization that cold season grass seeds find it difficult to survive in summer, and the green sculpture faced inevitable retirement. Netizens called for the scruffy little dog to be kept up longer.

Jing'an landscaping and city appearance administrative bureau, in response to public appeals, have tentatively planned to extend the project for three months, and they are currently screening for locally grown grass species that are resistant to high temperatures as replacements.

Feng said: "The grassy area in Suhewan has become a public living space, and the public are virtually raising the scruffy little dog, becoming their mommies and daddies. From the initial building, to the call for delayed retirement, and the brainstorming of naming and designing cultural and creative products for the puppy in recent days, every step of it has public participation, becoming urban intellectual property, co-created by the whole city."

Data from Suhewan showed that because of the attraction of the scruffy little dog, between April 18 and May 5, Shanghai Suhe MixC World registered as many as 1.701 million visits, up 192.53 percent on a year-on-year basis. The visitors generated consumption of nearly 61.57 million yuan ($9.1 million), 49.22 percent higher than the same period last year.

Lin said: "From an economic value perspective, the scruffy little dog brings lightweight and low-cost cultural and tourism dividends. In the short-term, the massive check-in flow will activate consumption in the Suhewan area, directly driving the growth of surrounding catering, retail, photography exploration, and other businesses, and extending the cultural and tourism consumption chain of Suhewan."

"On a long-term level, it creates the business card of Jing'an Suhewan city with zero marketing costs, enhances the commercial visibility of the area, and drives the premium investment of surrounding shops. At the same time, it provides new ideas for the landscaping industry. Original ecological and emotional landscapes will become a new trend in landscape design."