Introduction

Occupational injuries occur in people from all walks of life, including medical workers, construction workers, farmers, and gig workers [1,2,3]. Occupational injuries are classified into four main types: physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial hazards. Recently, an increasing number of researchers have focused on psychosocial hazards associated with occupational injuries [4,5,6,7].

Garden workers experience various occupational hazards during their daily work. For example, this work may involve confined spaces, slo** or unstable surfaces, and physical harm caused to employees by the need to climb trees into branches [7]. A Danish cohort study found an association between pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s disease in gardeners [8]. A survey of 367 horticultural and arboriculture practitioners in Hong Kong, China, found that workers in such industries had a high rate of accidents at work, they were generally exposed to biological hazards and were less aware of chemical injuries [29, 30]. The number of questions in this survey is approximately 100, and the sample size is approximately 500–1000. Possible situations, such as incomplete questionnaires, incorrect questions, and sampling distribution during the questionnaire survey, were considered. A total of 3500 questionnaires were distributed. This study conducted a questionnaire survey by directly contacting the person in charge of the garden companies. Bei**g has seven districts; five garden companies were randomly selected from each district. Using the probability sampling method, 10% of garden workers were selected from each garden company for a questionnaire survey. We sent a link to the online survey webpage to the participants via mobile phone and the gardeners answered in their free time. This survey method not only enables the manager of the questionnaire to monitor the collection of the questionnaire in real time but also effectively manages the data. The literature indicates that several researchers conducted studies using this survey method [36]. The items related to anxiety symptoms are 2, 4, 7, 9, 15, 19, 20; The items related to depressive symptoms are 3, 5, 10, 13, 16, 17, 21; The items related to stress symptoms are 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18. This scale has been widely used in previous studies [37,38,39]. In this study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale is 0.94, indicating good reliability.

Job satisfaction scale

The Job Satisfaction Scale, developed by Brayfield and Rothe (1951), initially contained 18 items [40]. This study uses a simplified version of the job satisfaction scale with a total of six items, including the nature of the work, superiors, colleagues, income, promotion opportunities, and six aspects of the work situation, using the five-point Likert-scale, from 1 (extremely dissatisfied/totally disagree) to5 (very satisfied/totally agree); the higher the score, the higher the satisfaction of the respondents. The effectiveness and reliability of this scale have been demonstrated in previous studies [41]. The Chinese version of this scale has also been used in previous studies on Chinese people [Limitations

This study has the following limitations. First, the study was conducted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Garden workers’ mental health may have been affected by this factor, resulting in higher anxiety and depression scores. After the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, or in future research, this factor will be controlled to better understand the physical and mental health status of Chinese garden workers. Second, the cross-sectional study design may have led to an inability to determine causality. Third, this study did not consider the impact of regional, social, or cultural background factors on the physical and mental health of the garden workers. Future research should focus more on this issue and clarify the mechanisms by which social and cultural factors affect the physical and mental health of garden workers.

Conclusions

Chinese garden workers are more stressed, anxious, and depressed. Gender, whether they can eat three meals on time, monthly income, and job satisfaction are important factors affecting their mental health. Enterprises and the government should address this problem by continuously improving the working environment of garden workers, providing salaries that match their positions, and increasing the recognition and job satisfaction of garden workers to reduce the impact of negative emotions on personal health, thereby improving personal health level of garden workers and maintaining physical and mental health.