You have had some pretty good answers. All the suggested causes do occur from time to time.
If the difference is varietal, there would be differences in the stems as well, but often it takes a specialist to detect this.
I doubt that herbicides are involved, but there might be some nasty material underground, affecting the roots on one side. I have a tree in my garden with its branches on one side growing at least twice as fast as on the other. We are pretty confident that the builders of the house (it is fairly new) had filled up a hollow in the ground towards one side of the tree with builders' rubble.
The direction and intensity of shading also are important in practice. Note also whether it is an absolute difference in flowering or not, rather than one side flowering earlier.