Wind Scorch?

When I look out my kitchen window, I can see that plants in containers to the left look fine but some of those to the right are brown and dried. In addition, across the lawn one of the columnar evergreens has brown withered patches on one side.
I can't figure out why this is happening - there has been a fair bit of wind recently but how it it picking out these plants, I don't understand!

                                         Right side:

                                         Left side:

                                          Right side:

                                         Left side:

Diagonally across, the evergreen has some brown:

This one, right beside the evergreen, not affected at all.

I suspect someone's been spraying something on weeds around here GRRR

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