Abstract: The construction of ecological plant landscape in rural areas is an important part of the p rogram of building of a new socialist countryside. A village typ ical of the Changshu region was chosen for analysis of species composition and diversity of household courtyards and for investigation of their plant diversity andmodels of configuration with the TWINSPAN classification method. Itwas found that out of 281 household courtyards, 170 had p lants and 111 did not have any. The plants growing in the courtyards included a total of 151 plant species, belonging to 116 genera and 58 families, which formed 4 types of courtyards and 10 models of configuration. The species diversity index demonstrated a significant relationship with steoro structure of the plants, showing the richer and the more complex the latter, the higher the former. It can, hence, be concluded that ornamental plants dominate the courtyards and p lay a major role of ornamentation; courtyards fail to keep an effective greenland area adequate to maintain a proper per-unit-area plant ecological benefit; and the construction of native plant landscape and species diversity needs to be further improved.

Key words: rural landscape, rural area, courtyard, plant landscape, Changshu