Favorite herbs and their uses.

I'm in the process this year of rebuilding my herb garden after mine got paved over a couple of years ago when I built a garage. I thought I would ask if folks out there had favorite herbs and uses for them. Catnip has never left my yard having escaped the pavement and my cats just love it. I have also kept a supply of chives. You can't beat chives for a great garden plant and uses in the kitchen, yummy! One that I lost and am so happy to have back is lovage. I hate buying celery for soup etc. because you buy a whole stalk but only use a small portion. We just sren't big celery eaters but some things like chicken soup just don't taste right without it. Lovage is great, all you have to do is pick some leaves and Viola! Its even better flavor than celery IMHO. Plus one of the butterflies (monarch?) likes to lay its eggs on it and the plant is very large and attractive. Again, not showy, but nice. You can even use lovage to screen out ugly views etc. On top of that the stems make dandy drinking straws!

So do you have a favorite herb or two? What do you use it for?