Karst rocky desertification (KRD) is one of the biggest challenges in the ecological restoration of the karst region in Southwest China, and vegetation restoration is a crucial approach. In the past 50 years, domestic practices and researches have been carried out about natural and artificial restoration of KRD. However, little is known about the succession characteristics and restoration effects of the revegetation in the KRD area. Here we investigated the community diversity and niche characteristics of the Planted Vegetation (PV) and the Air Seeding Vegetation (ASV) in Shilin Scenic Area, Kunming, Yunnan, with Zonal Natural Vegetation (ZNV) selected as the comparison, to reveal the differences in the vegetation composition and the resource utilization characteristics between different artificial restoration methods. Results show that: (1) 92 species belonging to 80 genera of 45 families, 138 species belonging to 101 genera of 50 families and 44 species belonging to 37 genera of 26 families were recorded in ZNV, PV and ASV respectively. 12 common species were identified among three vegetation types. (2) The significant difference of Patrick index and Shannon-Wiener index were detected among three revegetation types, sequencing ZNV > PV > ASV (P<0.01). The Jaccard index between PV and ZNV was 0.14 and that between ASV and ZNV was 0.12. (3) The Niche width of species varied remarkably among ZNV, PV and ASV. Pistacia weinmannifolia was among the top species with higher niche width in all vegetation types, which meant it had a prominent competition ability in harsh circumstances. (4) The niche overlap showed ZNV > ASV > PV, indicating that the species diversity index in revegetation was smaller than that in zonal natural vegetation. However, 89.33% of the dominant species in the revegetation were indigenous species with broader niche width and smaller niche overlap, which demonstrated the stability of revegetation. Besides, PV had a more effective restoration effect compared with ASV. Our findings can provide insights for the plant community construction in the ecological restoration of KRD in Southwest China.