My father has never laid matted stone, but I've had people request information about it, so I looked around on the internet to see what I could find.
I found five videos that can give you a great alternative to laying stone traditionally. You will learn how to lay flagstone walls, columns, and a porch or patio as well as get an idea of the tools, time, and effort that you'll need to put into your project.
All of the videos together take about 10 minutes.
A lot of the same work my dad does would take many more hours. We're not sure that you could get all of the same shapes, sizes, and colors of the hundreds of types of flagstone that exist, but for many of the basic colors, this could be great.