I have a good grass pattern and as long as I don't stare at it, I can't find my design if i put a bunch down. So it does work but yeah.
Why don't you do this? Make a path of some great pattern you have, and JUST walk on that?
That's what I do. But then the grass die's under it, then you take your pattern off, and then you have a custom made path!!!
^^ this is exactly what we did for our town. we didn't know how quickly the grass died when we started playing in January and made the whole town barren by February. We've got laid out some nice patterns for paths and once we got the borders to grow back we just picked up the tiles. Gold roses are the way to go to ensure you don't kill off grass walking around to water flowers.