This study was carried out to investigate the impact of two litter remaining characteristics of six typical vegetation communities in urban green spaces on the physicochemical properties of the soil. Typical vegetation communities in Yuantouzhu Park were selected as the research area, and the litter amounts of those vegetation communities in the urban green spaces and their responses to the soil physicochemical properties were studied. The results showed that the annual litter amounts of the tree-shrub-ground cover, tree-lawn, tree-ground cover, and tree-shrub-lawn communities were significantly higher (P<0.05) than those of the shrub-ground cover and shrub-lawn communities. The litter standing stock, total soil porosity, non-capillary porosity, and soil organic matter, total N, and hydrolyzed N contents of the coverage from the tree-shrub-ground cover, tree-ground cover, and shrub-ground cover communities were all significantly higher than those of the coverage from the tree-shrub-lawn, tree-lawn, and shrub, lawn communities. Soil bulk density of tree-shrub-ground cover, tree-ground cover, and shrub-ground cover communities were all significantly lower than it of tree-shrub-lawn, tree-lawn, and shrub-lawn communities. Although there were some significant differences in the soil capillary porosity, pH value, and total P content among the six communities, there were no differences in the total K and available K contents. According to the correlation analysis, the annual litter in the communities had no correlation with the indicators of the physicochemical properties of soil at 0-10 cm. By contrast, the litter standing stock was closely related to the soil physicochemical properties, that is, its value was significantly negatively correlated with the soil bulk density (P<0.01) and pH value (P<0.05) and significantly positively correlated with the total soil porosity, non-capillary porosity, soil organic matter, total N content, hydrolyzed N value (P<0.01), and available K content (P<0.05) and had no correlation with the soil capillary porosity and total P and total K contents. These results indicated that litter on the surface cover of urban green spaces can directly or indirectly improve the soil physicochemical properties as well as the soil water holding capacity and permeability. Increasing soil organic matter and N contents can also improve the soil pH value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]