The concept of a community of life in the mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasses and sands is an important guideline for the implementation of ecological civilization in China. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) integrates social, economic, and ecological benefits, to address diversified challenges and realize sustainable management of socio-ecological systems, which is highly compatible with the concept of life community in China. The ecological security pattern is an effective tool for integrating ecological elements and optimizing spatial allocation. In this study, the Huangfu River sub-watershed on the Loess Plateau gully region was taken as the study area, and a "risk-pattern-path" ecological restoration framework guided by NbS was proposed. Based on the landscape ecological risk assessment, we diagnosed the ecosystem problems in the watershed, constructed a source-corridor-node ecological security pattern, and designed the "restoration measures-ecological benefits-human well-being" ecological restoration framework in accordance with the eight NbS criteria. The logical relationship of "element-problem-criterion-strategy" was established to realize the spatial location of the NbS restoration pathway of all elements. The results show that: (1) The landscape ecological risk of Huangfu River sub-watershed has significant spatial differentiation, with high risk around the main stream and the southern part of the watershed. The area of high risk, medium risk, and low risk accounted for 21.43%, 25.56%, and 53.01% of the whole area, respectively. (2) There were 18 ecological sources, 153 ecological corridors and 86 ecological nodes identified in the watershed. The distribution of ecological sources and corridors is relatively uniform, while the distribution of ecological nodes in the northwestern part of the watershed is relatively low. (3) The strategy of integrated conservation and systematic management of mountain-river-forest-farmland-lake-grass-sand of "river channel renovation+slope and ditch co-management+mine remodelling" was designed. A total of 80 restoration projects in 3 major categories and 10 minor categories were arranged. (4) The restoration strategy has a total score of 86.04% in the NbS self-assessment, which is highly compatible with the NbS criteria. Under the guidance of the NbS, the study makes use of the ecological security pattern for the ecological process coupling and spatial layout synergy of the elements of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, dams and grasses, which provides a useful practice for maintaining ecological security, managing systemic problems and realizing sustainable development in the watershed.