Hard red clay, eh? Any chance you ordered that rugosa from Pickering (whose multiflora rootstock will do well in your hard red clay)?

Own root? Well, your rugosa needs sandy soil, preferably with ground water going through it.

Do you have a drainage area, a swale or ditch where you could drop several bags of sand and work it into the clay at (at a minimum) a one bag of sand to an equal volumn of clay?

From what I've seen, it's both the tightness of the clay and the lack of near constant water that are the problems. (Lots of stories about my trying to save some found rugosas, only to have them fail to thrive in anything other than the well watered sandy soils from which I found them. (Even one from SW Virginia that looked great growing next to a major drainage off of Pine Mountain and barely hanging on at a neighbors house up there where it was too close to the house with little rainfall and no off-the-mountain drainage and maybe too much lime from the cement foundation of the house.)

My Dad grew several healthy, happy rugosas in a clay soil in western Pennsylvania. His favorite was 'Hansa', dark magenta-purple with an intense fragrance of cloves and good repeat. His soil had decent organic content, and it was a yellow-tan clay not the red clay of your area, but it was definitely clay. I remember getting my shoes stuck in the spring mud as a child and needing my mother to come pull me out.

Rosefolly

I had a long hedge of Rosa rugosa Roseraie de l'Hay in my garden in England. It was beautiful!
It's scent pervaded the whole garden.
They do sucker sometimes, although mine didn't.
I found it to be the most easy care, long flowering, insect attracting hedge I had ever planted.
No spraying, no watering and no pruning apart from trimming back the occasional shoot to keep the hedge shapely.
My soil in that garden was sandy loam.
It might be worth making a raised bed for your rugosas.
They would be worth it.
Daisy

Where do you live? From Georgia Mountians, it is probably too far. But if you are in Washington DC in May to early June, go to National Arboretum, where they have several red and white (alba) rugosas. The gardeners seem to prune back he bushes some, but they grow vigorously. They repeat bloom.

Here, in eastern PA, I grow my Rugosa Rotesmere with no care. I rip out suckers, make a slit with my spade, stick 'em in and watch them grow.

Rugosas actually do not do very well here in the alkaline, semi-arid west, but I grow two anyway, Rosaraie de l'Hay and Dart's Dash. They get chlorotic as the summer progresses, probably because the irrigation water is alkaline, but I just love them. They will be happier where you live.

Rosefolly

I have brown clay (hard but lots of nutrients) and I add a lot of aged horse manure...probably almost half and half, to start. The roses all love it, including the Therese Bugnets and Snow Pavement roses. My mom didn't add quite as much manure (she started with more of a garden area, but similar soil) and she grows Blanc Double de Coubert, Rosaraie de L'Hay, and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer...which I believe is a Rugosa hybrid. So far, all seem very happy.

I grew rugosas in a clay soil years back & they did just fine as long as thr pH was OK. Rugosa's do NOT tolerate alkaline soils, they will have iron chlorosis (new leaves yellow with green veins) in the upper 6's & higher.