Abstract: As the impervious urban area is increasing, non-point source pollution arising from storm runoff has a growing impact on the quality of receiving water. To promote the sponge city construction in China, this paper discusses the runoff nutrient removal from bioretention systems of low impact development, the problems in its numerical models, and the fate of the nutrients and their removal mechanisms. Methods for improving the nutrient removal effects are summarized from two aspects of bioretention soil mixture (BSM) design and structure optimization, and the optimization includes four measures: improving inflow characteristics, adjusting the combination in packing structure, adjusting export settings, and adding carbon sources. We suggest that future researches should focus on media improvement, optimization of structure design, and molecular ecology related to nutrient cycling.