While you wouldn’t necessarily choose to walk on your prize plants, there are many tough contenders that cope with a fair degree of trampling. Just as in wilder landscapes, plants evolved to cope with grazing animals and foraging humans, so one of the benefits of ground cover plants is that they have tough leaves that recover or grow back easily when crushed.
These powers of regeneration can be embraced in the garden. Choose walkable ground cover plants that can accommodate light garden traffic, planting them as a mixed carpet or in pockets in between paved areas.