Taken from the Eclectic Gardener @ http://www.teachinggarden.org/
Written by Alan Hickman

With the end of March and the first few sunny days of spring, there comes an urge to get out in the garden and 'do something'. For the most part, it is an urge that is best resisted!
The sprinkles of rain and the cold frosty nights are finishing off winter's work of opening up and aerating the soil. If there was a time for Keep-Off-The-Grass signs, it would be these transitional days when the surface is moist and soft. Walking on a lawn, especially if it is at all squishy, compacts the top couple of inches of soil and undoes a winters worth of nature's work.
In most gardens, the lawn is the common area which gives access to everything so, unless levitation is one of your party tricks, how do you get the kitchen scraps from the back door to the compost heap without walking across the grass? The answer, of course, is a garden path.
A set of stepping stones is a garden path in its most rudimentary form, and in many cases, it is the most desirable way of getting from A to B. Set just a little bit higher than the surface of the soil, stepping stones provide a firm dry footing year round without incurring the visual impact or the expense of a more formal walkway.
Stepping stones can be set into the grass without any particular foundation preparation. Lay the stones on the lawn and separate them so that they are a comfortable distance apart to match your stride. Walk back and forth a few times as you normally would to get the spacing right. Remember that your pace length changes with speed so, if indeed the destination is the compost heap, walk as if you wanted to get back into the house asap.
With the distance set, just cut around the edge of each stone with a spade, lift out the sod and drop the stone back into place. If, over time, a stone sinks or tips, it is a simple job to lift the paver up, put a bit of soil under it and reset it. With no edges to trim, with no surface to sweep or rake and with no impediment to the lawn mower, stepping stones have a lot going for them.
From an esthetic point of view, unless the garden is very formal with everything in straight lines and at sharp angles, the shortest distance between two points is seldom a pleasing route for a garden path. Gentle curves and corners which disappear behind trees or shrubs are much more easy on the eye and they add interest and surprise to the landscape.
The usefulness of stepping stones does not end with getting across lawns. For practical purposes, mixed perennial borders need to be limited to four to five feet in width - any wider and you can't reach the centre for weeding or maintenance without walking on the bed and compacting the soil. With a row of more widely-spaced stepping stones - or standing places - a border can be expanded in multiples of four feet.
As the center of a wide bed would typically be planted to taller perennials, the stones would quickly be hidden from any normal viewing position, but would provide safe access for any deadheading or staking that might be required.
The material used for stepping stones is only limited by a gardener's imagination. Because the 'stones'don't have to fit together, any sort of material with one flat surface will do for an informal path. About three decades ago, I built a path from thick slabs cut from the trunk of a big old willow that a neighbour had cut down. The wood rotted after about five years, but the slabs were free and delivery was a matter of throwing them over the fence.