It is situated on the north west shore of the Bedford Basin in the central area of the municipality.

It borders the neighbouring communities of Hammonds Plains to the west, Sackville to the north, Dartmouth to the east, and mainland Halifax to the south.

[4] On 21 July 1749, Father Le Loutre's War began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports.

To guard against the Acadians, the French, and the Mi'kmaq, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (1749), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1749), Dartmouth (1750), Lunenburg (1753) and Lawrencetown (1754).

To protect it, he hired John Gorham and his Rangers to erect a fort on the shore of Bedford Basin.

In 1752, among the first to receive a large land grant was military officer George Scott in the Fort Sackville area.

The Moirs Mill generating station built in the early 1930s to supply the necessary electricity required to run the factory.

To the north are the communities of Lower Sackville, Lakeview and Waverley and Dartmouth are to the east, Halifax and Timberlea to the south and finally Hammonds Plains to the west.

In these ridge terrains, soils are typically dry, shallow, and coarse, and often degraded by a history of repeated wildfire.

The river has been heavily affected by ongoing development within its watershed and a chronic loss of riparian zones along its shores, especially in downtown Bedford, where the impervious surfaces of shopping centres and strip malls dominate the landscape.

There is a popular walkway along much of the Bedford Basin waterfront that begins at DeWolf park, and continues as the Bedford-Sackville Connector Greenway, a crushed gravel covered trail that meanders along the Sackville River.

There is an opening celebration, a Canada Day celebration, free pancake-breakfast, dog show, Kids' Extravaganza, Kids' Triathlon, Movies in the Park, the Rubber Duck Dash, and the Scott Manor House Tea Party.

There are highways-and-roads for motorists, but Bedford's network (like all of the built-up area of Halifax) sees traffic congestion on these roads during the many peak hours.

The 11.5 km (7.1 mi) section[16] of the Bedford Highway is notorious for slow speeds at morning-and-evening peak hours.