The effect of urbanization on plant composition, diversity and distribution in parks along the urban-rural gradient area was investigated in nine parks in Fuzhou’s three regions (including urban, suburban and rural areas). Results were as follows: (1) a total of 139 species that belong to 61 families and110 genera were recorded. Meanwhile, 9 dominant families, mainly including Liliaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Leguminosae and so on, were identified in 9 parks. There were no obvious dominant species in urban parks, while the main species for afforestation were Acacia confuse and Cryptomeria japonica var. sinensis in suburban and rural parks; (2) the order of Margalef index, Simpson index and Shannon-Wiener index were urban, suburban parks, and rural parks from high to low on the horizontal spatial scale. Meanwhile, the three indices of the tree layer were higher than those of the shrub layer in vertical distribution. Our results indicated that woody plant diversity was influenced by the urbanization factors, such as introduction of exotic species and changes of land use types, the diversity of woody species showed the linear decreasing pattern from urban to rural areas along the urban-rural gradient in subtropical city parks.