Highways construction adversely imposes on the surrounding fragile environment, leading to difficulty for revegetation in dry valleys of the Minjiang River. Appropriate vegetation restoration measures are of great significance for the restoration and reconstruction of vegetation and enhancement of ecological functions of roadside slopes in arid areas. Indigenous shrubs and herbs were planted with three treatments on an extremely degraded earth-rock roadside slope., including seeding, seeding before fiber blanket coverage, as well as seeding before fiber blanket and forest humus coverage The difference in vegetation characteristics, soil physical and chemical properties, and the control of runoff generation and soil erosion under different treatments were analyzed. The results showed that average height, coverage and total biomass of artificial communities were 26.1-46.7 cm, 63%-89% and 347.02-593.78 g/m², respectively. The vegetation characteristic of artificial communities was similar to local perennial plant communities. Both cover and biomass were higher for the artificial communities than for naturally regenerated control plots after three years of revegetation. The effectiveness of seeding before fiber blanket and forest humus coverage was higher than others in promoting plant growth, accelerating community construction and preventing soil and water loss. The total coverage of seeding with fiber blanket and forest humus was 74%, and its total biomass was 506.35 g/m²; during the growing season, compared with the natural recovery, its runoff decreased by 87.8%, and the soil loss decreased by 92.1%. The species richness of treatments with fiber blanket coverage were significantly higher than seeding and natural recovery (P<0.05). However, there was no significant difference in soil improvement among the three planting treatments. Compared with the natural recovery, the total carbon in soil among the three planting treatments increased 9.4%-31.1% and the total phosphorus in soil increased 37.3%-117.3%, indicating that all restoration measures improved soil nutrients status in the 0-20 cm soil layer of the slope. In addition, according to redundancy analysis and partial least squares path model, the difference of plant community structure under different planting treatments was the key factor affecting soil erosion on the earth-rock road slope in the Minjiang dry valley; and the direct effect of vegetation on soil and water loss was -0.935 (P<0.05). We suggested that artificial indigenous shrub-grass community structure was a suitable vegetation restoration model for the road slope in the dry valley and possessed a good applied perspective in ecological restoration of arid areas.