Ocimum basilicum

Enough controversy for a while ...

There's nothing quite like the smell of crushed basil when you are cooking, there's nothing like the taste it adds to salads and pasta dishes - or anything else you care to add it to. Without being unnecessarily Proustian, the scent of basil and thyme is enough to bring back memories of my parents' garden, and, as a small child, being given a patch of ground and experimenting with growing a herb patch all of my own.
Over the last few years I've taken to growing basil in pots and then taking it with us to France for the summer vacation and, when it gets there and soaks up the sunshine on the steps outside the back door, watching it darken and thicken and intensify dramatically in taste and smell. Here, there's never quite enough sunshine, at least in in these western parts, to grow it successfully outdoors, even against a sunny wall. This year with a particularly cold  spring with, how shall we say,  not exactly unbroken sunshine, it's been a struggle to get the plants to thrive even on the kitchen windowsills

And after the summer we bring the plants back in the car and try to get them to last until Christmas and beyond ...
There's nothing like fresh basil grown in a warm climate.....

Having said that, there's also nothing which quite emphasises the cultural / linguistic divide between British (or English) English and American English than a discussion about herbs and basil, particularly if - as in this (British) video - you intend to grow it alongside tomatoes...