Putting path through nature scene with vertex/weight paint

Hi,

So as the title says, I have a nature scene that I would like to put a path through, the way I have it now is that a have a plane with several particle systems for the vegetation, and that plane has a single diffuse shader on it for a simple dirt texture.

The way I imagine a path would be to use a vertex group to remove the vegetation where the path goes and then use vertex paint to make a mask for the second diffuse shader that will have the path material (Made in quixel mixer).

I believe this will work, but it seems like there should be an easier way because with this approach I will have to match the vertex and weight paint pretty much identically, and as far as I have found, there is no way to copy weight paint to match vertex paint ( or vice versa).

Please tear my theory apart and guide me in the right direction!