I have returned from a short internetless vacation and was happy to find:

The new release seems to “have something to do with nature”. First, it includes as addons “Sapling” and “Ivy generator” which is great news as I was eager to test them and compare to Arbaro and the standalone Ivy generator. Second, something in the particles rotation system was changed and all files using particles from Nature Academy now are messed up. I believe anyone using particles has been affected by this, not just Nature Academy. So by now – sigh- I reverted to 2.58 for a while, maybe soon there will be a fix reverting to the old settings, if not I will look into the matter some more to be able to work with the new release.

The sapling addon works with the 2.58 release too, you just have to install it yourself. I gave it a try and liked it. There is a brand new tutorial on this here: Blendernerd

All this nature thing is really fun and useful but I feel like I have been neglecting the true way of Blendermama lately so I am preparing a serious non nature related 2d cad to blender import post for the end of the week.