The clear eggs are mollusc. The yellow things are the remains of slow acting fertiliser.
Vine weevils do not normally eat the roots of wood plants like that, in my experience.
Is the soil in that position very wet?
The soil doesn't seem particularly wet, but it was previously next to an otto luyken laurel which died and when I dug it up the roots were still in the shape of the original pot and were damp and rotted despite being in the ground for a year.
Sounds to me like there is a problem with where you are planting the shrubs. I would dig down and see if there was a hard pan of clay soil which was preventing any water from draining away. If the roots of anything planted are not spreading out from the original compost then there is also the possibility that the soil is poorer in food than the compost from the pot.
The way it has come away looks like the roots have rotted away, and it has taken a strong gust to finally take it down. I also think the soil may have been too wet or the base further down has some type of drainage issue. Photinias prefer free draining soil and if the roots further down has poor drainage, even if the top 30cm is dry, it will over time slowly die.
I dug out where the photinia was to put another plant in, and there was a large root ball and a lot of thick, healthy looking, tough roots. The mystery deepens!
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