Structure characteristics of plant community with two restoration measures, namely natural vegetation enclosure and artificial cultivation + enclosure, were investigated in southern margin of Tengger Desert. Moving sandyland without enclosure was taken as the control. Results showed that the invade species richness of artificial cultivation + enclosure increased to 12 species after 15 year enclosure, in which density of A rtemisia scoparia was 7.6 plants/m²; Corispermum patelliforme, 3.2 plants/m²; Bassia dasyphylla 3.0 plants/m²; A griophyllum squarrosum, 1.6 plant s/m²; and Set ari aviridis, 1.1 plants/m²2. The species composition and life forms were closed to natural vegetation enclosure, but the differences still existed. In families and genera compositions, the differences of the two measures were dominant family and the species numbers of each family. In species diversity, Shannon index and richness index of natural vegetation enclosure was significantly different compared with artificial cultivation + enclosure, except the other indexes. In shrub layer, ecological dominance index of natural vegetation enclosure was higher than artificial cultivation+ enclosure. The similarity index indicates that ecological distance between artificial cultivation + enclosure and natural vegetation enclosure was still far and ecological distances between the two restoration measures and moving sandyland + nonenclosure of vegetation sprinkling distribution were significantly far. In conclusion, enclosure can significantly promote the diver sity restoration of sandy land vegetation and the effects of cultivation on restoration of species diversity on sandy land is relatively slow and gradual.