Summary: In general, it is difficult to measure distances in the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichmüller space. Here we consider the distance between strata in the Weil-Petersson completion of Teichmüller space of a surface of finite type. S. A. Wolpert [Surv. Differ. Geom. 8, 357–393 (2003; Zbl 1049.32020)] showed that for strata whose closures do not intersect, there is a definite separation independent of the topology of the surface. We prove that the optimal value for this minimal separation is a constant \(\delta_{1,1}\) and show that it is realized exactly by strata whose nodes intersect once. We also give a nearly sharp estimate for \(\delta_{1,1}\) and give a lower bound on the size of the gap between \(\delta_{1,1}\) and the other distances. A major component of the paper is an effective version of Wolpert’s upper bound on \(\langle\nabla \ell_\alpha,\nabla \ell_\beta\rangle \), the inner product of the Weil-Petersson gradient of length functions. We further bound the distance to the boundary of Teichmüller space of a hyperbolic surface in terms of the length of the systole of the surface. We also obtain new lower bounds on the systole for the Weil-Petersson metric on the moduli space of a punctured torus.