This may not be appropriate for your particular situation, but for woodland paths I've had good luck with wood chips. These can often be obtained for free, and allow you to easily make changes if your garden design is not set in stone (pun intended). If you use cedar chips, they have the added bonus of helping to keep fleas off your dogs.
My favourite medium for pathways include pea gravel, great for sound effects in the garden, tramping from one end of the garden to the other end...also great for surfacing a dog run too...my Dobermann would "relieve himself" no other place on the property!
I've used pea gravel before and have some reservations. It never packs down, therefore can be difficult to walk on, is hard to contain, and becomes easily wedged in shoes and tracked into the house.
I would say bark chips are good, but do sometimes stick to shoes a bit -ditto for gravel. Crushed gravel packs better for a more solid walk - pea gravel is more attractive and softer on bare feet. Weeds eventually come through either if you don't put down a landscape fabric barrier. With bark mulch you can easily just add more - gravel is more costly and heavier to lift. What type of path are we talking here? Do you need an esthetically pleasing path for landscaping or is this just to keep a nice clear weedless path in a vegetable garden? In a vegie garden I might just put down some weed-barrier fabric or old burlap or something.
Thank you for all your suggestions. There will probably be room for more than one choice if only to relieve the monotony. I am working on planting the entire lot front and back. No grass whatsoever, just beds and paths. My current concern is the front yard where the beds are basically all mapped out but the plantings are probably still subject to change. Traipsing woodchips or pea gravel into the house is not a problem because the family have their own concrete path into the house and the garden is entirely a one-person domain. A problem in this front area is the leaf litter from a cedar and a japanese maple - not to mention the gazillion little maple volunteers which would make the pea gravel or crushed gravel quite difficult to keep clear for long. I suppose I could look into getting one of those flame throwing weed burners. I'm leaning towards bark chip because of the leaf litter, although I do like the idea of hearing footsteps on gravel only because of recent plant thefts but maybe an electric fence would be more suitable but that would be another thread.
If you aren't worried about money, mortared flagstone can look really great. and it won't stick to your shoe if that is a concern! Lee valley tools sells a motion detector deer scare hose attachment that you stick in the ground, it will work on the thieves too. I got blasted by mine on more that one occassion scares the heck outta ya! Carol Ja
