Twee rustende duiven

Twee rustende duiven is a sculpture of two doves at rest, made by Janko Berman in 1985. It stands in the Rosarium Oudwijk, a rose garden set between Wilhelminapark and Hogelandsepark in Utrecht. Oorsprongpark lies a short walk away, and the garden dates from 1911 to 1913. The Rosarium ranks among the oldest rose gardens in the Netherlands and carries municipal monument status.

The association Nos Jungunt Rosae wanted a wider public for rose growing, so it asked the city for land. The plot started life as a trial field for roses. Jan Denier van der Gon, the city's planting master and a garden architect, drew up the plan. He laid the beds out in classical symmetry, taking seventeenth-century rose gardens in France and Italy as his model. Around two hundred varieties bloomed at the opening, and a busy Sunday drew four hundred visitors every half hour. The winter of 1939 killed ninety percent of the bushes. The city stepped in afterwards and has carried the upkeep in full since 1957.

The doves share the beds with a second sculpture, Theo Mulder's Vechtende Kalkoenen from 1965. Mulder's turkeys fight, and Berman's birds hold still. He left other figures in public space across the country. He made a snake relief for the reptile house at Amsterdam's Artis Zoo. De Beer van Utrecht went to a local primary school. A fountain from Denier van der Gon's original design still stands at the centre. The plot measures forty by eighty metres, so you take in fountain, roses and both sculptures in one view.