Meghan Markle Picks Up Flowers During Solo Outing to Montecito Farmer's Market

Meghan Markle stepped out for a little shopping in California — and she had her furry friend by her side.

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, was photographed last week at the Montecito Farmer's Market — located near her and Prince Harry’s California home — accompanied by one of the couple's three dogs on a leash.

Meghan and Harry have two beagles, one named Guy, which she adopted in 2015 before meeting her husband, and another rescue named Mia that the couple adopted last summer. The couple also has a Labrador called Pula — Pula means "rain" in Setswana, and since rain is very scarce in Botswana, it's considered valuable and a blessing.

Meghan appeared to stop at a stall selling honey and tried out some samples. She also visited a vendor selling bouquets of flowers and selected a bunch of white and pink blooms, which she carried with her as she left the market.

Meghan is a big fan of fresh flowers and often posted about blooms on her now-defunct Instagram. "Flower" was also a nickname that her mom, Doria Ragland, lovingly gave her during childhood. In a blog post on her now-defunct lifestyle site, The Tig, Meghan shared her nicknames: "Meg, MM, M&M, and Flower (which my mom has called me since I was little)."

And while Harry and Meghan named their daughter, Princess Lilibet, after Queen Elizabeth's childhood nickname, they often refer to her with a flower-inspired moniker: Lili.

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The outing comes a few weeks after the Sussexes officially vacated their former U.K. home Frogmore Cottage.

"We can confirm that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have vacated Frogmore Cottage. The Duke and Duchess have repaid the expenditure incurred by the Sovereign Grant in relation to the renovation of Frogmore Cottage, thus leaving the Crown with a greatly enhanced asset,” Keeper of the Privy Purse Sir Michael Stevens said in recent briefing. 

Frogmore Cottage was Prince Harry and Meghan’s first family home, moving from the two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace in London to the larger space right before Prince Archie was born in May 2019.

In 2020, Harry, Meghan and their son Prince Archie settled into their new home in California, where daughter Princess Lilibet was born in June 2021. The family continued to use Frogmore as a base of operations during visits to the U.K., including during Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee festivities.

Prince Harry discussed the difficulty of leaving Frogmore Cottage in the couple's Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan.

"We always saw Archie running around the garden at Frogmore Cottage, and maybe jumping in the Queen's pond. That was all part of our future, and everything changed really, really quickly," Harry said of the life he and his wife had imagined there. 

He added, "We knew we were going to get some breathing space from this very painful experience that we'd been stuck in, but also at the same time, it was really sad."

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During their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan and Harry opened up about their move to Meghan's home state of California and how it benefitted Archie.

"To have outdoor space where I can go for walks with Archie and we go for walks as a family and with the dogs. You know, we go on hikes or go down to the beach, which is so close," Harry said.