Abstract: Little information is available in the literature about functional diversity of the soil microbial communities in cherry nurseries during the sapling cultivation period. Investigations were carried out on variation rules of soil microbial functional diversity and enzyme activity in the soil of a cherry nursery with the Biolog-Eco plate technique and enzymologic methods. Results show that with the cultivation of cherry saplings going on, soil microbial functional diversity increased, soil microbes improved their use of soil carbon sources, and the activities of catalase, urease, alkaline phosphatase and invertase were also significantly enhanced. The two-way ANOVA and RDA analysis show that soil microbial functional diversity and soil enzymes activities, except catalase's, were significantly affected by cultivating ages and soil depth; AWCD of the carbon sources for soil microbes were positively related to cultivating age and negatively to soil depth; and soil microbial functional diversity was positively related to activities of soil enzymes. In short, cultivation of cherry saplings improves soil microbial functional diversity and enzyme activity in the soil of the nursery.