If your conditions are alkaline, you'd be wise, on the whole, to avoid roses with a lot of Multiflora in their background. 'Russelliana' is a Hybrid multiflora, so in alkaline conditions, it's not going to be a happy camper.

Yes -- You can supplement and supplement ... but you'll likely have to do that repeatedly. That got very, very old for me, which is why such roses are No Longer Here.

(OR, you could be like me, and insist that you could grow them just fine. But in my case, that belief was confronted by reality.)

I don't know the ph of my soil, but do know that Multifloras for the most part struggle here. But 'Russelliana' is pretty good. If you really desire it, you might experiment, particularly if you can get cuttings or a sucker. It roots easily.

The desert soil here is definitely alkaline, and I have lots of roses grafted on multiflora which do fine. The rose that used to have chlorosis problems here is the hybrid musk Ballerina, which is grafted on Dr Huey. I "cured" Ballerina by using granular fertilizer for acid loving plants to feed her once a year in spring. Confusing, it is. Diane

Diane, thanks for the idea. I'm going to keep it in mind.

I have some non-alkaline areas of my yard (weird, I know, we have two belts of soil that meet on our property), but I try and use it for my fruit trees, camellias, etc. Gardendirektor Otto Linne and Clothilde Soupert do okay in the alkaline clay if I remember to feed them some azalea fertilizer and some iron occasionally. I may have to plant Russelliana near the fruit trees, since it is a big rose.