Meghan’s suspiciously perfect life: After her baffling ‘garden haul’ of home-grown vegetables, all the Duchess’ social media claims that seem just too good to be true

Meghan Markle will often share wholesome content with her Instagram followers – delighting in ‘garden hauls’ of fruit and vegetables, sweet clips of writing in the sand and footage of ducks passing by her mansion.

But on some occasions, not all has been as it seemed, with eagle-eyed fans often the first to notice when the Duchess of Sussex has seemingly made an awkward blunder in her social media content.

Most recently, the mother-of-two, 43, posted an image of the Sussexes’ beagle Mia sniffing a basket of fresh produce apparently grown in the garden of her Montecito home in California. 

Referring to her beloved pet, who Meghan and Harry rescued in 2022, the Duchess captioned her post: ‘The unofficial quality inspector of this morning’s garden haul.’ 

Mia buried her face in the ‘haul’ comprising of broccoli, carrots, corn, red peppers and squash as well as spring onions and an assortment of fresh herbs. 

But eagle-eyed social media users immediately claimed there was something suspicious about her fruit and veg, including a lack of any mud on them and the time of year they were picked.

One follower wrote: ‘Huh. She’s so good at gardening she can grow all things from all seasons at once’. 

Taking note of the squeaky-clean vegetables, another critic noted there wasn’t even a ‘speck of dirt’ on any of the food, despite appearing to be freshly picked. ‘I’ve never seen vegetables so clean after harvesting’, another said. 

Others noted that, in California, May could be too early in the year to harvest several crops. Some even speculated that Meghan could have gone to a local supermarket or Farmer’s Market instead. 

‘And everything is perfectly clean. She is also the only person outside of the US Cornbelt to harvest corn in MAY?’, one wrote. 

According to the California Farmland Trust, sweetcorn is typically harvested from June to September – meaning it may be slightly too early for Meghan to have grown her own at her Montecito home, in the Santa Barbara county. 

By contrast, broccoli is harvested much earlier in the year, according to the Vegetable Research and Information Centre. 

Spring onions, bell peppers, carrots and certain types of squash may now be ripe for harvesting.

But this isn’t the only time Meghan’s wholesome content has been questioned by critics claiming to spot flaws in her seemingly perfectly-arranged images and footage.

For instance, the Duchess was once accused by fans of staging a video with adorable ducklings to upload on Easter Sunday, while her suspiciously perfect St Patrick’s Day waffles were called into question. Read below for more ‘blunders’ apparently spotted by critics… 

‘Candid’ writing in the sand

On New Year’s Day, Meghan launched her official Instagram account @meghan and shared a clip of her writing ‘2025’ in the sand.

She was filmed running barefoot towards the tide of a Californian sandy beach before drawing the near-perfect cursive digits – hinting at her upcoming Netflix series, With Love, Meghan and her lifestyle range, As Ever. 

However, eagle-eyed fans spotted that this was not the first time the mother-of-two wrote the numbers.

Early on in the video, when Meghan is trying to find the best spot to write the figures down, followers notice her walk past another ‘2025’ written in the sand, along with a number of footprints.

It can be seen in the left hand corner, perhaps hinting that she filmed the clip multiple times in order to get a flawless take.

A beaming Duchess is then seen running off camera as she giggles, before later revealing that Prince Harry filmed the clip. 

It has long been rumoured the profile belonged to her after the account was set up back in June, 2022, but remained empty. She then teased fans again in 2023 when she declared she was ‘getting back on Instagram’. 

Easter ducklings

On Easter Sunday, the Duchess was accused of ‘staging’ a sweet video that shows her watching a flock of ducks crossing a road in Montecito.

She looked overjoyed when she was filmed reacting to the adorable mother duck and her seven ducklings waddling together as a pack by a woodland.

Meghan, who was dressed in an elegant white sleeveless midi frock for the occasion, observed the animal waiting for its young in the middle of the road.

She captioned the post, ‘An Easter weekend surprise’, and added the message, ‘Wishing you a Happy Easter full of love….and surprises!’

But some viewers weren’t convinced that the Duchess seemingly came across the ducks by chance, with some claiming she had ‘set up’ the video after saying the camera is ‘set up in the centre of the shot’.

Taking to X, one person wrote: ‘You just know this was a set up. Poor ducks had to be filmed with Megs. She just happened to be there with a cameraman when the ducks crossed. Sure!!!’

Another penned: ‘Oh look the camera is set up to have Meghan right in the centre of the shot and the ducks are slightly off camera. She literally just got dolled up for that five seconds of just herself with some ducks’ 

A third said: ‘Oh I don’t believe her, it’s a scam, the ducks were brought in to record Markle’s ad.’

A fourth commented: ‘A normal person would post a video of the mother duck and her beautiful ducklings. Meghan has someone film her so she (not the ducks), is the star of the video, in full ‘costume’ and makeup.’

However, Mallard ducks are very common in the state of California. 

The California Waterfowl organisation states that the majority of the mallards that are harvested in the area are also hatched there, rather than coming from other areas in the US or Canada.

Prince Harry’s wife appeared both shocked and thrilled in the clip when she came across the family of delightful ducks.

The soundtrack to the post is ‘Choo Choo Ch’Boogie’ by American saxophonist Louis Jordan, presumably chosen to draw attention to the train-like motion of the duck and her flock.

St Patrick’s Day waffles

On St Patrick’s Day in March, Meghan whipped up some picturesque green waffles for Archie, Lilibet and Harry to enjoy at breakfast time. 

The Duchess posted Instagram videos that showed her using a waffle maker to create a Shamrock green holiday-themed breakfast to celebrate Ireland’s patron saint with her family.

She filmed herself whisking up a mixture, before pouring it into a steaming hot black cast-iron waffle maker, declaring that the Sussexes’ ‘love a theme!’ 

But she was accused of apparently faking the sweet dish after royal fans noticed something suspicious about her Irish-inspired waffles.

They claimed that the finished treats that she showed off on her Instagram looked completely different from the pattern on the waffle maker she was using.

Her iron, which appears to be a $50 Cuisinart Waring Pro WMK200 Belgian Waffle Maker, has deep ridges so each waffle can be split into quarters.

But royal fans spotted that her waffles had no ridges and were flat, as she plated them up for Archie and Lilibet with kiwi, blueberry and whipped cream to make a face.

For her and her husband Prince Harry, 40, Meghan served a plain green waffle alongside a dollop of cream and two strawberries.

‘For us! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!’ she added alongside her green-themed photographs.

Someone wrote online: ‘Her kids’ waffles look like coloured Eggos – not homemade at all.’

Another responded by saying: ‘Definitely not with the waffle maker, she’s trying to pretend. They would’ve been a lot thicker and the sections would’ve been like this.’ 

A third said: ‘Great catch! I just noticed that in another photo, the waffle is in two sections. So phoney.’ 

However, one supporter suggested she could have made different ones for adults and children using different irons.

Meghan’s first date outfit 

Royal fans also spotted an inconsistency in Prince Harry’s memoir regarding the outfit Meghan wore on their first date.

In 2023, when his book, Spare, hit shelves, Harry recounted the moment he first laid eyes on his wife when they met at 76 Dean Street in London, which is one of Soho House’s private member clubs.

Describing her outfit, Prince Harry writes: ‘She was wearing a black sweater, jeans heels. I knew nothing about clothes but I knew she was chic.’

However, royal fans on TikTok pointed out that Prince Harry’s account conflicts with a comment Meghan made in a September 2018 interview.

While viewing her wedding dress with a Royal Collections curator, the mother-of-two explained how she wore a blue dress on her first date with Prince Harry.

Ahead of their nuptials, the duchess says she had asked for a piece of the frock’s fabric to be stitched into her wedding dress as her ‘something blue’. 

Four months after the couple’s wedding, the Duchess was reunited with her Givenchy wedding dress for the ITV documentary, Queen of the World. 

Taking a closer look at her dress, Meghan said: ‘Somewhere in here, there’s a piece of – did you see it?

‘The piece of blue fabric that’s stitched inside? It’s my something blue. It’s fabric from the dress I wore on our first date.’ In response, the curator gushed: ‘Oh that’s about the most romantic thing!’

However, it is possible that Meghan didn’t consider the first time she and Harry met as a ‘date’. Prince Harry goes on to describe how she then wore a ‘pretty blue sundress with white pinstripes’ during their second meeting.

‘Working mum’ who has a nanny 

At the end of April, Meghan revealed that she has an ‘amazing’ nanny for her children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet who has been with the family for five years.

She said the nanny, whom she did not identify, takes her son and daughter from their home in Montecito to their different schools on some mornings. 

This came a fortnight after Meghan claimed how she felt ‘juggling’ working and being a mother can be ‘incredibly overwhelming’, adding: ‘Oh my gosh, I just need a break.’

In an appearance on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, Meghan praised her nanny after being asked: ‘What’s your morning routine look like?’

She said: ‘This morning was different because Archie has a cold so he’s home from school, but I get up at 6:30 and gives me a minute to – I wish I could say I woke up and meditated – I don’t do that, I have the monitors on so I could hear both the kids.

‘They get up at 7 so I give myself a little bit of time to either put on workout clothes brush my teeth, get both of them, up I get them dressed get them downstairs, make breakfast and then if I haven’t done their lunch boxes the night before then do that.

‘I love doing lunch boxes, it makes me very happy and writing a little note in their lunch boxes… If I don’t have meetings in the morning then I try to do school drop off.

‘They’re at two different schools, so that’s a big circuit. So from 6:30 in the morning on drop off mornings for me I’m not home till 9. And then after that I’ll just jump into meetings.

‘And then on other days then I’ll wake up and get them all set and then our amazing nanny who’s been with us for five years, she’ll take them to school for us and then, yeah, we always try to…’ Smiling, she added: ‘I know, that’s morning, that’s the morning, that gets you to 9am.’

Meghan said this two weeks after the second episode of the Duchess’s new Confessions Of A Female Founder podcast was released on April 15, in which she spoke about ‘juggling it all’ and nursing a poorly Archie and Lilibet at home.

The Duchess revealed how, at the time of recording, one of her children had RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) – a common cause of coughs and colds – and the other influenza A – a form of flu.

Meghan, talking about the challenge of being a working mother, said: ‘With that comes the woman who is juggling it all and doing it all from home, being confident enough to tell the truth about what’s going on, because you can’t give grace to someone in the same way if you just have no sense of it…

‘My kids, for example, right now, one has RSV, the other has influenza A. I hear a little pitter patter of feet upstairs, home from school, you know cough syrup all night and rubbing the back, and … we still find a way to show up for both.’

The Duchess also shared how being a ‘mom’ was her ‘favourite title’ and how Harry tries to encourage her to take a break from her children.

‘Now you have the title of mom. Just like me. Favourite title. Love it. Oh my gosh. I love being a mom so much,’ Meghan said. ‘It’s my favourite thing. It is the thing where you’re like ‘Oh my gosh, I just need a break. I just need a minute’.

‘And the second you step into the other room, you go, oh but let me scroll through pictures of them endlessly on my phone, and… my husband’s like, ‘My love, can you just give yourself a minute? Why don’t you go work out? Why don’t you go take a bath?’ 

‘Daily’ barefoot walks in the garden 

In March, Meghan shared an image of herself walking barefoot in her picturesque Montecito garden while holding a metal watering can and some spring onions that she seemingly just picked.

The Duchess – who was dressed in a clean white blouse, top and jeans – was seen strolling along the edge of the large paving stones, seemingly to avoid striking her feet on the painful-looking gravel path.

She shared the image on As Ever’s official Instagram page and wrote: ‘Daily rituals.’

However, more than a month later, Meghan shared four short videos filmed in the grounds of her garden – but wearing sensible black wellie boots this time.   

One clip shows her carrying a huge basket of white roses with the caption: ‘End of day harvest.’

Meghan posted a second clip on her Instagram showing her out of breath while carrying the basket of recently bloomed flowers and a smaller basket of oranges – while a male voice, possibly her husband Prince Harry, was heard laughing off camera.

A third video was filmed of her setting the baskets down to take another video, which also featured her black Labrador, Pula, who was playing in the background.

The final clip showed Meghan’s beagle, Mamma Mia, sniffing around the oranges and a new basket of ripe strawberries. She captioned it: ‘A beautiful end to the day.’

The videos gave a rare look at the garden of the property, where Meghan has lived since 2020 with Harry and their children.

The Duchess’ beekeeping

Meghan recently shared a video of herself and her daughter Lilibet harvesting honey in matching beekeeping suits.

The Duchess posted the clip to The Archies’ hit Sugar, Sugar in a sweet nod to her son, Archie, six.

Her caption read: ‘Look at all of that fresh honeycomb! Harvesting honey with my little honey. (Like mother, like daughter; she’s even wearing my gloves)’

However, experienced beekeepers have cast doubt on whether the former royal actually handles the bees, after reviewing the footage on her show, With Love, Meghan, and her Instagram clip.

Some have commented on X about how suspiciously clean her uniform is, noting that theirs is now brown from pollen and honey. Another said that she was ‘not a beekeeper’.

The video began with Meghan and Lilibet walking hand-in-hand towards a beehive while wearing appropriate safety suits.

It then cuts to Meghan cutting out a slice of honeycomb before storing it in a glass jar and pouring the freshly harvested honey over it – not unlike the bottles of wildflower honey sold by her brand As Ever.

The original video included a rare glimpse of Lilibet’s face after she could be seen turning towards her mother.

The pair wore matching outfits in a vast field, but Lilibet accessorised with a pair of adorable rainbow wellies.

They held hands and were filmed from the back walking towards the hive, before Meghan, 43, bent down and rubbed her daughter on the back.