William N. Valavanis

Who is William N. Valavanis?

William N. Valavanis, born September 3, 1951 in Waukegan, Illinois, is a Greek-American bonsai master who carries on Yuji Yoshimura's tradition of teaching Japanese techniques and aesthetics to enthusiasts in the West.

At age 11, Valavanis began to pot tree seedlings and bend them into bonsai shapes. Four years later in the family's new home in Charleston, West Virginia, he began to exhibit and lecture on bonsai at local garden clubs, and the following year started the "House of Bonsai" business. The family moved to Rochester, New York in 1968.

The summer of 1970 Valavanis spent studying with Kyuzo Murata at that master's Kyuka-en Bonsai Garden in Omiya, Japan, and with Toshio Kawamoto at the Nippon Bonsai-Saikei Institute in Tokyo. The following year Valavanis graduated from The State University of New York Agricultural and Technical College at Farmingdale, Long Island, NY with a degree in Ornamental Horticulture. The next year he was back to Japan to study bonsai with Kakutaro Komuro and Toshio Kawamoto, bonsai chrysanthemums with Tameji Nakajima, and earn a master's teaching certificate in ikebana from the Shofu School. Returning to his home in Rochester, NY, Valavanis had to redevelop the bonsai collection which he mostly had sold to finance his study in Japan. A degree in Floriculture and Ornamental Horticulture from Cornell University followed in 1976 on the heels of several months study at Yuji Yoshimura's School of Bonsai in Briarcliff Manor, NY. During his school days Valavanis continued to teach, train and sell bonsai; at Briarcliff Manor he conducted introductory and intermediate level bonsai courses. In 1975 and 1976 he wrote the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia of Classical Bonsai Art.